So a 9th Grader Walks into School with a Homemade Clock
And apparently school officials in Texas overreacted. Just a little bit. From the Washington Post:
Ahmed Mohamed just wanted to impress his teachers with a homemade invention. The story of what happened next has made the 14-year-old from Irving, Tex., the object of national outrage and attention.
Eager to show off to his engineering teacher, Mohamed walked into MacArthur High School on Monday morning with his hastily assembled invention: A digital clock.
Hours later, the ninth-grader was escorted out of the school in police custody after teachers mistook the device for a bomb.
Note; he showed it to his engineering teacher who thought it was cool but warned him not to show any other teachers. But it beeped in English class, he showed it to the teacher who said it looked like a bomb.
They took him out wearing a NASA t-shirt and handcuffs.
Twitter and social media is exploding with this story - #IStandWithAhmed.
President Obama tweeted:
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg extended an invitation to Mohamed to meet him at the social media giant’s California headquarters. #IStandWithAhmed trended on Twitter. NASA scientists and MIT researchers offered tours, along with praise for the teen’s ingenuity.
Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said that Mohamed will not be charged with any wrongdoing and that the case has been closed.
“We have no evidence to support that there was an intention to create alarm or cause people to be concerned,” Boyd told reporters Wednesday.
But,
The teen’s family said Mohamed has been suspended from school for three days.
School officials continue to say they needed to act.
I'm not sure how we'll get more kids interested in STEM if they have to this kind of reaction.
Comments
--FremontDad
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/09/16/ahmed.html
The teacher probably had a pretty normal reaction, and now it is a national story.
The context of this, as well, is that the mayor of this town hates Muslims, pure and simple. Look her up. And there have been anti-Muslim problems there....
This whole episode stinks to high heaven.
Is there a local STEM school that could treat building your own clock as fulfilling the admission requirements?
Please read the story before you comment.
-Sigh
Seriously? This kid was excited about an engineering feat he had pulled off and wanted a teacher to see it. I think the reaction would have been quite different if he had been a blue-eyed blonde.
-HS Parent
1) police chief saying "We live in an age when you can't take stuff like this to school." What about homework? What about STEM? Computer science and engineering? Robotics?
2) Ahmed is transferring schools. Good idea.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/white-kid-builds-nuclear-reactor-and-homeland-security-offers-help/
HP
I know nothing about bombs, so this device looks scary to me. It apparently looked scary to that teacher and to school personnel. In the post Columbine world is that a surprise?
Again, this appears to be a lot of small human mistakes that all add up to a silly national story. A good kid probably did not think through what this would look like to others. People got scared and made mistakes. That is the human condition. On the scale of injustices that occur in the world, this is small.
By the way Melissa, I did read the story.
What we live in is a state of perpetual fear.
--FremontDad
You do realize that there's racism up here too right? See Pasco shooting and the firing of SPD Officer Whitlach. In some Texas school districts there are high schools dedicated to science and math and they are ranked well. I know because I attended one--the High School for Health Professions now known as the Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions whereby juniors and seniors completed rotations in the Texas Medical Center and the lower grades drew blood and tested urine. Of course students earn enough credits to go immediately into college and I believe now, a few are even directly awarded scholarships to Baylor College of Medicine upon graduating.
Don't make assumptions about Texas or the South because in many ways they are outperforming this state.
- Boom
That was said tongue in cheek, based on the anti-evolution, anti-climate change, anti-gun death studies, anti-scientist opinions I hear from friends in Texas. It seems there is more suspicion of science among the general population in Texas, though I actually have never seen a study of it. The fact that no one in that school could figure out how that clock worked would seem to bear that out, but if you say it isn't true, I'll try to keep an open mind. Maybe this school's reaction was really an aberration. Perhaps they all build clocks in the next school over.
-HS Parent
- Boom
HP
Thermistor
http://trungbac.vn
http://vitinhgiahung.vn
http://vitinhnhatphat.com
http://vtgh.vn
http://cantho60s.com
http://raovatzoom.com
http://maylocnuocviet.org/may-loc-nuoc/may-loc-nuoc-geyser/
http://1tour.vn/khach-san/da-lat/
http://1tour.vn/khach-san/da-nang/
http://1tour.vn/khach-san/nha-trang/
http://1tour.vn/khach-san/vung-tau/
I have some content or wish everybody preview:
máy lọc nước
máy lọc nước RO
máy lọc nước gia đình