Filipino table manners innapropriate in Canada?
Re-posting from an Angry Asian Man news story of yesterday, because the thing actually happened in the Montreal suburban area where I live: A Filipino second-grader in Canada has been repeatedly punished by his school for eating with a spoon and fork (link). A stab at my wronged belief that differences would be understood and accepted. Some things like these push me out of me. To a lesser extent, people who think that manga/anime is a marginalized sub-culture. Cultural misunderstandings take a pinch at my arm skin and twists it 360 degrees x 10. I guess it's because of how something so anodine as eating the way your ancestors have always eaten was singled out by a near-sighted educational system tool as a deviant behaviour, even after adults have been involved. >:O
I thought traditional Filipino etiquette involved thumbs and fingers, not fork and spoon.
Do you think we should stand up for the right to eat with our bare hands, even at private or public schools, in defense of our great Filipino traditions?
Surely, we don't believe as parents that our kids can do whatever they want at table because it is traditionally Filipino, like belching or burping. We grant schools the same authority and privilege by sending our kids to them.
The principle that applies is "IN LOCO PARENTIS."
I think this is a case of Filipino victimology all over again. Shameless!