Student pulled from N.Y. school after being mocked for Canadian heritage

Here's some advice to the U.S. teacher accused of teasing a Canadian-born student so relentlessly that his mother had to pull him out of school: Be nice, eh?

Ottawa-born Noah Kilpatrick, 15, says he was tormented over his Canadian heritage by two teachers at the Faith Fellowship Christian School in Watertown, N.Y., which is about 40 kilometres south of the Canadian border.

That's about 25 miles, or just far enough to drink an extra-large Coke and eat a full box of Krispy Kreme donuts.

The community is so close to the Canadian border that the Fox News affiliate that operates in the area promotes itself as "Serving Northern New York & Southeast Ontario."

Ontario is part of Canada, for anyone from upstate New York who might be confused by the term.

Kilpatrick says he was teased for wearing Canadian colours and mocked with other Canadian jokes, often in front of his classmates.

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The National Post reports that Kilpatrick’s family has been living in the U.S. for 10 years and has American citizenship, but that wasn't enough to help avoid the sting of Canadian stereotypes. The newspaper reports his principal, who also taught him history, would often make fun of Canada as a "cartoonishly small country filled with communists and people who club seals for fun."

Here's a quick geography lesson for the history teacher: At 9,984,670 square kilometres, Canada is the second largest country in the world. Wee little America is only 9,629,091 square kilometres.

We won't bother addressing the communism and seal-clubbing accusations. One suspects he won’t change his tune unless he had Glenn Beck tell him personally.

Faith Fellowship Christian School declined to offer comment for the Channel 7 News story, other than to release a statement that it was their policy "not to discuss the affairs of students or their families in public venues."

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Kilpatrick's mother said she tried to organize a meeting with the teachers in question before pulling her son out of class, but the school wouldn't participate.

They might have been unable to find a Canadian-English interpreter to attend such a meeting, or perhaps they simply didn't take the issue all that seriously.

Either way, a child whose only crime was being born in Canada was forced to finish the school year at home because of the actions of a teacher and the inactions of the school.

Canadian jokes are seen by many to be harmless, and under most cases they are. Among friends they can be harmless, between sporting rivals they can be innocent enough. But between a teacher and student and they can be inappropriate, especially when pushed too far.

Set the Canadian jokes aside and you are left with allegations that a teacher teased a student for being different, and did so to the point where they had to be pulled from school.

That isn't comedy. That is cruelty. Even us seal clubbers know the difference.