Are Schools Overregulating What Students Eat?

A recent incident involving Double Stuf Oreos highlights the debate about how much supervision of children is too much.

Just by sending a frustrated tweet, a suburban Philadelphia mother set off a tsunami. “Insanity!” the woman fumed. “I have to sign a permission slip so my middle-schooler can eat an Oreo.” She was telling the truth, and her tweet inadvertently launched a national debate over whether a lawsuit-crazed society had finally gone too far.

The cookie in question was actually a Double Stuf Oreo. The permission slip came one day in March from Darlene Porter, a teacher at Welsh Valley Middle School in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The purpose: an experiment on the earth’s tectonic plates.

According to the permission slip, students would “model plate movement and observe earth’s features,” using the cookie to “simulate the 3 types of plate boundaries.” But then came the crucial part. “The students may eat the Oreo after the investigation if this is okay with you. The students do NOT have to eat the Oreo if they do not wish to do so.” A warning at the end: “Without a signed permission slip, my child understands that he/she will not be able to sample the Oreo.”

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