School Ordered to Pay After Saying Boy 'Ate Like a Pig'

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - Tensions over a student's eating habits at a Canadian elementary school have cost a school nearly $17,000 in moral and punitive damages to the boy's family, according to the National Post .

The case centered on a claim of racial and ethnic discrimination and has drawn international attention.

The National Post reported that a Quebec Filipino family won their fight against a Montreal school board that in 2006 allegedly discriminated against a seven-year-old boy. The claim said the student was reprimand by a hall monitor for the way he ate his food at school.

The claim stated the monitor allegedly told the boy's mother, Maria-Theresa Gallardo, that her son "ate like a pig." The principal allegedly told her to have her son, Luc Cagadoc, eat "like a Canadian."

In addition, a lunch supervisor allegedly asked the child if people "in his country" wash their hands before eating, according to Gallardo. School officials claimed that the boy was punished for clowning around during lunch.

Gallardo had explained that her son eats in the Filipino tradition by breaking up food with a fork and then pushing it into a spoon, according to a report in the Vancouver Sun .

The Quebec Human Rights Tribunal sided with the family, ordering the Marguerite Bourgeoys School Board to pay them $17,000. Gallardo, 39, had sought $24,000, according to the Post.

"We are overwhelmed and happy that this is finally over and we got the justice we were looking for," Gallardo told the Post.

Sometimes, the contents of a school meal can create problems.

In Pemberton, England, a nursery confiscated a 2-year-old's cheese sandwich because it did not include lettuce or tomato, thus violating Westfield Children's Centre's healthy eating policy, reported Telegraph.co.uk .

"I think it is absolutely pathetic and these people are playing Big Brother with people's lives," the boy's mother, Dorothy Gallear, 32, told the news site. She ended up withdrawing her son from the nursery.