Sounds like the four "arresting officers" were so ignorant they didn't know that you need explosive material, not just a trigger, to form a bomb.
14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
551–560 of 994 posts
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#552Hey Ahmed - if you're reading this, post the plans to your clock. I'd love to build one in solidarity with you.
It's not quite the same, but WIRED linked to some videos of how to make clocks:
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
If public schools are going to succeed, then many states need to "catch up" when it comes to funding. More funding will attract more teachers, creating a stronger candidate pool. If you look at the average funding per student by state, Texas isn't doing so hot [1], especially for being the second largest state [2]. There's definitely more to it than just funding, but I think that would be a good starting point. [1] h…
People HATE TAXES. People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children in school or never had children in school. We under value in society 1) Education (We make fun of smart people who lack social graces) 2) Science (Scoff at all science and under fund Space Programs) I ran for local School Board in my city. We are a school district with over 90% qualify for free lunch and extreme poverty. Parents pick Chart…
>People HATE TAXES. People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children in school or never had children in school.
Or maybe I hate paying school taxes because the schools promote sports as far more important than academics. End of last year I went to the awards ceremony for top performing students in academics and sports... the difference in treatment left me feeling ill in my gut.
Exercise serves a purpose. I've even remember seeing evidence exercise helps improve learning. And in no way am I against a group of kids playing ball together. But I do not like funding an educational institute which does more to foster sports are being more important than the very stated purpose.
Think about some other good goal. Say feeding starving people. Now imagine if you were forced to pay some charity that was grossly incompetent in how it actually worked. Yes, people got fed, but often after they were negatively impacted in other ways. And that is money that could'be been going to better charities, but you aren't allowed to make such a choice.
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#554This is the crux of the issue: > “We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” Mr. McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation." Creative people don't need to have a good reason to make something. They create things because there is joy and satisfaction in creating things. It's a shame Mr. McLellan had such a boring childhood.
The only broader purpose is "fun".
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd think administrators would have a very different approach to disciplining a "bad office-supply purchasing" decision versus a well-thought out choice to use school equipment & electricity for non-work related causes.
> electricity for non-work related causes I wish we could fire teachers for using their computers for Facebook and Amazon shopping during the day.
in the school where I most recently taught, there was an explicit expectation that teachers could use district computers for personal business when on break. Being on facebook when they had kids in the room would be an entirely different matter.
The internet was also heavily monitored, with a proxy server that required a login to get to forbidden sites. Our IT guy had a pretty good idea of when teachers were getting on facebook etc.
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#556It 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…
Of course it won't get set straight. His "record", such as it is, will say: - three day suspension for bringing hoax bomb to school - arrest record, juvenile detention, child protective services called And that's it. There's no "and then the magical internet outrage fairy came in and fixed everything".
And then he cant get any jobs. Gets so frustrated he actually builds a bomb..and well..you get the point.
The amount of stupidity perpetuated by these administrators and the police is astounding. Never underestimate the poor taste of public authority. Most of their reasons tend to be 'We needed to lay down the law first to assert dominance. That's how we could then subvert the broader scope of his actions. Then we teach him about sacrifice, plea-bargaining. And like a good boy, he says sorry, gets his slap on the wrist, and everybody wins because he learns to respect authority, and be a good little automaton Johnnyboy!"
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
If public schools are going to succeed, then many states need to "catch up" when it comes to funding. More funding will attract more teachers, creating a stronger candidate pool. If you look at the average funding per student by state, Texas isn't doing so hot [1], especially for being the second largest state [2]. There's definitely more to it than just funding, but I think that would be a good starting point. [1] h…
I'm always find the "more funding" idea to be somewhat dubious. Don't we already spend a ton of money on education? Perhaps even more per pupil than other developed countries?
One takeaway from the film "The Street Stops Here" ( which is a documentary of an extreme outlier teacher/coach, so caveat caveat ) is that it takes a strong sense of dedication to make a difference in education.
The person in question - coach Bob Hurley, in a decaying New Jersey town - is a retired parole officer, and he's there to keep kids out of prison. So this is is his white whale.
I don't think you can buy that, but you might be able to buy furniture - support systems, assistance, the like - to keep it from being killed off. Instead, we get six-sigma metrification which may well make it worse. At least it Heisenbugs the curriculum and distracts from actual teaching.
Something must be done, this is something, this must be done...
Then again, the canonical teacher is Socrates, and he was forced to drink hemlock...
I think people get embarrassed by being discarded by the sorting-machine and resent the system, even when it's their kids in it. We don't really value education for its own sake - it must be shown to be in service of other societal goals - mainly economic goals. That can get out of control quickly.
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
People HATE TAXES. People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children in school or never had children in school. We under value in society 1) Education (We make fun of smart people who lack social graces) 2) Science (Scoff at all science and under fund Space Programs) I ran for local School Board in my city. We are a school district with over 90% qualify for free lunch and extreme poverty. Parents pick Chart…
> We need a change in priorities and not freak out about taxes for education. People don't freak out over paying taxes for education. Even if they don't have kids in the system. They freak out over throwing money at a broken system and the solution isn't to throw more money at it. Attach a specific dollar amount to a student. Allow that student to go to whichever school they want. End of story. Stop forcing children…
No one I know has ever freaked out about paying taxes for education. They are, however, skeptical that the local school system which receives those taxes is wisely using those funds to provide education.
They have good reason. Much of the money poured into public schooling in the U.S. goes to administration and overhead rather than the direct costs of teaching and student evaluation.
Many parents in this country are desperate to get their children the best education they can, within a certainly dysfunctional, and possibly also corrupt, system.
Part of the problem is that the funding is largely dissociated from effectiveness. The people spending the money have no vested interest in seeing that it is spent appropriately, for the benefit of the children--and the community they will be a part of when they eventually cease to be students.
I am not proposing any fixes. I am simply agreeing with my parent post. Every parent knows that raising local taxes to throw more money at their local schools will not solve anything. Richer neighborhoods will have to subsidize the schools in poorer neighborhoods in order to provide equal access to educational resources to all children.
If you want your kids to have extra opportunities, you can voluntarily give your own money to the PTA for the school they attend. Clearly, having to pay to remove the dents in the school-owned band instruments is a problem of a completely different order of magnitude from students in the classroom not having textbooks, or paper and pencils. Equally clearly, it is a disservice for Louisiana students to get pseudoreligious instruction in science class, as Massachusetts students learn without political interference.
I'm not a socialist, but it is blindingly obvious to me that if the state is to provide public education in any form, it needs to provide equal resources to everyone. It cannot select winners and losers by giving more money to schools where the children of richer people attend, and less money to schools where the children of poorer people attend.
As PP stated, attaching an equal dollar amount to each student, for the sole purpose of paying educational expenses, is one way to improve upon the existing system. It is not necessarily the best way, but better is a good first step on the voyage to good.
Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
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To have a bomb you need explosives . Did this "looks like a bomb" have anything that looked like explosives? No. Therefore it did not actually look like a bomb. I assume that you meant to google image search IED. Doing so, I see one image with an exposed PCB. I see several images with cell phones. One shows a Coke can. Are we to believe that an exposed Coke can also "looks like a bomb"? Or should we maybe believe tha…
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Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School
#560A story. So, this thirteen year old kid with a Syrian father once got flagged up by Hewlett Packard because he was ordering electronic components. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next... Yeah, Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job, he got hooked on making stuff, wound up founding a company out of his garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak, and created the biggest electronics company in the world. Thank goodness h…
> Thank goodness he never took a clock he'd built into school. Uh... From Steve Jobs's biography: In twelfth grade he [Woz] built an electronic metronome—one of those tick-tick-tick devices that keep time in music class—and realized it sounded like a bomb. So he took the labels off some big batteries, taped them together, and put it in a school locker; he rigged it to start ticking faster when the locker opened. Late…
Of course the difference here is Woz both fully intended mischief, knew he could get in trouble, but in general had the expectation that he would get away with it in the long term.