runouw.com

Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High on Monday.

Instead, the school phoned police about Ahmed’s circuit-stuffed pencil case.

So the 14-year-old missed the student council meeting and took a trip in handcuffs to juvenile detention. His clock now sits in an evidence room. Police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it’s a clock.

In the meantime, Ahmed’s been suspended, his father is upset and the Council on American-Islamic Relations is once again eyeing claims of Islamophobia in Irving.

Source

That's really preposterous. I agree, we can never let our guard down especially if we live in a country that is considered a "target" of terrorism, but being that paranoid does more harm that help. Let's say the principal or the teachers were not smart enough to make the difference between an improvised clock the boy made and a bomb, but god damn at least the police should. They should have a bunch of electricians and pyrotechnists to tell the difference.

He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again.

This ♥♥♥♥ is ruining imagination, passions and willing to learn. This kid's got a gift, I'd hardly get my arse to do more than connect a bulb to a battery and call it a flashlight, let alone build a clock. I've heard of cases in the american system in which it got kindergarten children suspended for pretending to be knights with swords, bringing knifes to school and so on. Around here, this kind of things are pretty much ignored, and in more serious cases, such as bringing alcohol, drugs or 'pointy-stuff' being punished by not suspending the kid, but giving him "warning points". The system works like it follow, you have 10 points which indicate good behaviour, for extremly bad behaviour such as fighting, bullying, skipping classes and so on, you get a warning (aka -1). (Having 9 points out of 10 in any year, means you are automatically rejected from police academy and other insitutions like that). At some point, when the principal considers your points are too low (can be 7, can be 4) you are kicked out. Permanently. I don't think it's a perfect system, but seems better than yours.

For the love of the god, many things on terms of security need to be reconsidered in your schools. This violence control which punishes kids for pretending to be knights or even give up passions for electronics, purely because the idiotic teachers can't tell the difference between a clock and a bomb (who the hell would expose a bomb to their teacher anyway?) is idiotic.

Opinions?

My gosh. I completely agree with you on this one. 100% Could not have said it better myself. There is caution, and there is paranoia. This is clearly paranoia. And we are hurting our kids with it.

♥♥♥♥ dammit America when did we become the terrorists

MessengerOfDreams wrote:♥♥♥♥ dammit America when did we become the terrorists

i think it started when you brutalised the Native Americans and took their land

I read about this earlier today and holy ♥♥♥♥ did it piss me off. This is how you make someone not want to pursue their passion. The most idiotic part about this is the fact that one of the officers arrested him because "it looks like a movie bomb" to him. Good job arresting someone based on what a bomb looks like in a movie, you ♥♥♥♥ moron.

*Emelia K. Fletcher wrote:

MessengerOfDreams wrote:♥♥♥♥ dammit America when did we become the terrorists

i think it started when you brutalised the Native Americans and took their land

Lol true enuff

https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/statu ... 8553030656
I don't know much about this but Chris Hadfield replied and that's cool

At first glance I was honestly not very surprised and because stuff like this is unfortunately not really that rare, but reading the actual article was infuriating. Holy ♥♥♥♥ this is so much worse than any other story about zero-tolerance policies or whatever I've seen. People in the comments are saying that it was stupid of the teacher and the officers to accuse him of having a bomb (and what the ♥♥♥♥ their attitudes about it. I could feel the smug looks on their faces as they were interrogating him and insisting that he had a bomb or some other sort of device that was a threat) without any basic electronics experience, but I don't even think you'd need to know any electronics to see that there's clearly not a ♥♥♥♥ explosive connected to the thing at all. Also, what reason would there be to bring a bomb to school, anyway? He was apparently a good student, pretty damn patient with all of the islamophobia around him and tolerant of other beliefs, likely has lived in the US his whole life and has no reason to be against it, and so many other things counter anything they could have said. I didn't see any reasoning for accusing him other than "We don't know why he built it, so it clearly must be a threat." Like maybe people have ♥♥♥♥ hobbies and passions in life? If you have a possible bomb threat, maybe bring in a ♥♥♥♥ electrician who actually knows what they're doing, and THEN decide.

Another thing that pissed me off is that the article said they might still charge him with making a hoax bomb, just because they think that it could have potentially been mistaken for one, without considering any possibility other than that he's muslim so he's automatically anti-US and a terrorist and has no drive in life other than to harm others. What the hell.

I'm glad people (celebrities?) are at least trying to reach out to him and others like him. It's good that we have public figures supporting creativity and science/engineering. But it still sucks that others are so close-minded about race and technology and the like.

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656

Add Obama to that list of people trying to reach out to him.

WHY HAVE THEY NOT FIRED THE GODDAMN IDIOTS YET