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14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

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Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#111

Post by tdees40 »

vidarh wrote: post #107
god_bless_texas wrote: post #56

You can't legislate intelligence. Yesterday I went to my daughter's school's open house. When I entered, I was cornered by an administrator and told I had to sign some paperwork before I left. It was the computer policy. After I signed it, the admin said my daughter had to sign it too. She's 4.

The intent is not to legally bind her, which it obviously wouldn't. Usually the idea of having a child sign too is the idea having a child explicitly agree makes them more likely to be invested in complying. Whether or not there's any evidence that works, I don't know, but it's not quite as stupid as it might seem at first glance.

Uh, she's four.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#113

Post by slayed0 »

zaphar wrote: post #50

In the article it mentions that his engineering teacher advised him to hide it from the other staff. Which is confusing to me. The teacher obviously knew it wasn't a bomb and obviously knew the other staff would misinterpret this. So why didn't the teacher preempt this whole thing by advising the school that "Yes, this kid brought in a clock to show me. No, it's not a bomb no matter how scary it looks."

Not asserting fact here but merely providing my interpretation:

The engineering teacher may have advised the student to bring the device to school but to not pull it out in any other class. This could have been done to avoid distracting other students or attracting unwanted attention from other teachers. This seems like a straight forward request that may have been taken out of context. I have not seen a quote that uses the word "hide", which really changes the connotation of the statement. I highly doubt the engineering teacher thought specifically that the device could be seen as a bomb.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#114

Post by mikehollinger »

It's remarkable the difference that ~20 years can make. In middle school, someone's science fair project was building an actual briefcase bomb (with clay). It had a variety of sensors, and laid out (on a tri-fold poster board, of course) the guts of how each one worked.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#116

Post by austenallred »

marcinx27 wrote: post #47
austenallred wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair it's a middle school, and most people don't really know what a circuit board is for. I don't think it's outrageous that they asked . It should have never, however, escalated as far as it did. You're going to handcuff a kid who is cooperating and trying to explain what this thing he built is? Give me a break. But worse still they're still not backing down. It's suspension of all logic and reasoning. They sh…

Nah, it's a high school. And the reaction really wasn't warranted. He did show it to his engineering teacher before he got nabbed, too. According to the Times, "When Ahmed Mohamed, 14, brought the clock to MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., on Monday, an engineering teacher suggested that he not show the invention to other teachers. But it beeped during an English class, prompting Ahmed to show his English teache…

I mean the initial concern as in "What is that circuit board?"

Then it should go, "Oh it's a clock." "Is that true, engineering teacher?" "Yes." "OK cool."

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#117

Post by ceejayoz »

vatotemking wrote: post #115
ceejayoz wrote: post #11

> Children are encouraged “specifically [to] not bring items to school that are prohibited.” What, clocks? Or the NASA t-shirt he was wearing? ( https://i.imgur.com/PMgDR7m.jpg )

Why is he handcuffed?

He might poke one of the five responding police officers with those toothpick arms, obviously.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#118

Post by ryanlol »

martincmartin wrote: post #34
userbinator wrote: post #21

Apparently the authorities have determined that the best way to stop terrorism is to discourage any manifestation of personal intelligence, so that the population turns into mindless sheep. "If you don't know how to make a clock, you won't know how to make a time bomb" is their reasoning. It is seriously disturbing. I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of "hacking", only this i…

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Hanlon's razor is a pretty stupid quote here, there definitely is no need to distinguish stupidity from malice here. The people responsible for this mess should probably lose their jobs. (Based on the story as it was presented here)

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#119

Post by circuiter »

ceejayoz wrote: post #11

> Children are encouraged “specifically [to] not bring items to school that are prohibited.” What, clocks? Or the NASA t-shirt he was wearing? ( https://i.imgur.com/PMgDR7m.jpg )

The cop's expression suggests he's not happy with what's happening to the kid.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#120

Post by eldude »

> In short, Ahmed was arrested for making while brown.

This sort of demagoguery masquerading as journalism has got to stop. Upvoting exploitative personal political propaganda like this contributes to an atmosphere of narrow-mindedness on HN that plays to the bigotry of its readers, with the majority of comments here responding in like.

I'm certainly not defending it, but in reality this sort of (over) reaction, is perfectly explainable when you consider the risk of government employees responsible for the lives of children NOT reacting and being wrong.

Yes, those involved need some education, but no more so than the author regarding journalistic ethics, or the commenters here stirring up a witch-hunt. You can see all the anti-Texan/Conservative/School/Government-ists overreacting here right on cue.

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