Lower Merion Oreo Permission Slip Goes Viral

A local woman’s disbelief that she needed to sign a permission slip for her child to eat an Oreo cookie lit up social media over the weekend, according to philly.com.

A Twitter user identified as Main Line Housewife snapped a picture Friday of the permission slip, sent home by Lower Merion School District teacher Darlene Porter, and posted it to her account, saying, “”Insanity. I have to sign a permission slip so my middle schooler can eat an Oreo.”

The user of the Twitter account has declined interviews and has not been identified. The account has been switched to private, but not before her post caught the attention of media and blogs throughout the Internet. Many expressed outrage at what they perceive to be politically correctness run amok.

For example, Becky Bracken at parenting blog SheKnows.com writes:

It seems in a world of allergies and gluten intolerance and parents who demand only organic for their kids, even the simplest of treats, Oreos, have to be handled with the utmost care. And while most parents will join me in a hearty eye roll over the ridiculousness of an Oreo permission slip, the reality of school today is that instead of teaching plate tectonics, teachers are forced to police their students’ food.

According to the permission slip, the cookies were to be used as part of a lesson on tectonic plates. Students would be permitted to eat the cookies at the end of the demonstration.

“The students will model plate movement and observe earth’s features that occur as the plates move in this simulation lab,” Porter explains on the permission slip. “They will be using a Double Stuff Oreo to simulate the 3 types of plate boundaries and the geographical features that are created at the boundary. The students may eat the Oreo after the investigation if this is okay with you.”

Porter, a teacher at Welsh Valley Middle School, has also declined to be interviewed. A district spokesperson told philly.com that Porter was just exercising caution in case any students had a food allergy and could be harmed from eating the cookie.