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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

#41

Post by norea-armozel »

ams6110 wrote: post #35
norea-armozel wrote: post #23

I just been reading about this morning and all I can say is what the hell is going on in Dallas? I mean when I was a kid I brought to school a model rocket with some solid rocket engines and all that happened to me was the rocket and engines were held by the principal until my parents could pick them up. But a kid making a clock gets arrested? Seriously, wtf is going over there in Dallas?

My school had a rocketry club. Bringing this kind of stuff to school was encouraged.

I bet today the principal and staff would think you guys were terrorists planning to siege the local strip mall. /s

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

#42

Post by sageabilly »

ams6110 wrote: post #30

Things are so different now. When I was in high school, all of the following were common: - Boys carrying pocket knives/hunting knives. - Boys with firearms in their cars/trucks so they could go hunting after school. - Access to a wide variety of chemicals in chemistry class. - Access to a wide variety of electrical and electronic components in physics class. - Access to a wide variety of power and machine tools in i…

Tell me about it. The county sheriff came and taught skeet shooting to my 10th grade Health and Wellness class. The pigeon thrower was mounted on the back of the police cruiser and we shot 20-gauge shotguns on the practice football field. This was rural NC in the 90s.

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

#43

Post by hoopism »

I think we're making too big of an issue of this. The trial has already taken place and the boy was found to not float... so it turns out he must be guilty.

God forbid that an officer drops his walkie talkie and discovers that IT TOO IS A POTENTIAL BOMB! I mean, it has wires and circuits...

The ignorance here is astounding. I suppose he's lucky they didn't also try him as a warlock for summoning electricity from a magical box.

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

#44

Post by VincentEvans »

Personally, i wasn't surprised at the display of racially-biased fear at the sight of device that appears to a bystander to look like a bomb. People are people.

But why did it need to lead to arrest, hand cuffs, finger printing after an interview and a casual examination of the device clearly demonstrated it was a clock (there was an engineering teacher who could easily collaborate)? It was an outright excessive reaction to further compound what was a regrettable mistake.

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

#45

Post by bkor »

Navarr wrote: post #18

It is definitely profiling and I bet his race had a lot to do with it. But I think the same thing would've happened if I had brought such a device to school - having been a super dark dressed goth in school, the fear would've been it's a bomb. Schools are generally very very extra worried about everything these days, suspending him was unnecessary but with it only being three days I don't see it being a terrible thin…

You really mean suspending him is not so terrible because it was only 3 days? I hope I'm misunderstanding you.

The child learns to not trust anyone and that his best intentions are twisted into punishment. I'm pretty appalled by this.

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

#46

Post by x5n1 »

vog wrote: post #36
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…

> If you don't know how to make a clock, you won't know how to make a time bomb" is their reasoning Do you have any sources to back up that claim? It this really their line of thinking? Or did you just deduce this from their actions, i.e. that they seem to think that way?

In law there is a thing called mens rea. They should look that up.

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

#47

Post by marcinx27 »

austenallred wrote: post #28
ahmad19526 wrote: post #3

Go into any Electrical Engineering department at any university and you'll find plenty of students with boxes filled with circuit boards and electronics. Everybody who's played with electronics knows that stuff is brittle and needs to be protected carefully. One wire coming loose renders your entire work obsolete and unlike software, there's no debugger to tell you where you potentially screwed up... Racial profiling…

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 teacher what it was, according to an account in The Dallas Morning News."

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

#48

Post by ksangeelee »

radmuzom wrote: post #7

Cross-posting from [1] Is there any study to ascertain how these kind of incidents affect children psychologically, the effects of which manifest only years later? (Let's assume that this boy is a gifted engineer, and this incident leaves deep psychological scars not expressed in the next few years, but eventually leads him to take up activities later in life which are harmful for American citizens) [1] https://news.…

Far more likely that the experience will be a distraction to his learning and creativity, and will beg uncomfortable questions, the answers to which will affect his self-esteem.

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

#49

Post by bryanlarsen »

ams6110 wrote: post #30

Things are so different now. When I was in high school, all of the following were common: - Boys carrying pocket knives/hunting knives. - Boys with firearms in their cars/trucks so they could go hunting after school. - Access to a wide variety of chemicals in chemistry class. - Access to a wide variety of electrical and electronic components in physics class. - Access to a wide variety of power and machine tools in i…

I regularly brought my pocket knife to elementary school. Nobody blinked an eye. It was dull because I used it for digging and prying more than for cutting, but nobody would have cared even if it was sharp.

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

#50

Post by zaphar »

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."
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