This mentality itself is problematic and unfortunately commonplace among many K-12 school admins and teachers. When targeting those who have a strong passion for academically co-curricular activities like this, it just reinforces stereotypes of such admins as petty authoritarians who have serious issues with academically highly engaged Nerds and intellectual students. Heh…I’ve lost count of how many HS classmates recounted similar experiences with such teachers/admins who disliked them because they were Nerds or otherwise academically engaged during K-8. I also have similar experiences despite being quite light on the Nerd cred myself.
This very issue was one key reason a few folks I met during undergrad dropped out of their local high schools for several years despite having 1300 & 1400/1600 pre-1995 SAT scores and A-range GPAs in AP/college level courses. Fortunately, there were some colleges which were willing to admit them despite a lack of a HS diploma with scholarships on the basis of those stats, low-income/chaotic family backgrounds, and life stories. Not too surprisingly, they all hold the same negative stereotypes of teachers and moreso admins who are resentful of much more accomplished academically or at least, willing to question their points in/out of class without being intimidated by the teacher/admin’s greater position of power in relation to them.
Funny part is once they started undergrad, they found it to be a welcome change as college faculty are much more open-minded about taking them as they are and actually treating them with respect precisely for being themselves. I’m hoping Ahmed won’t have to wait till undergrad to have the same positive experiences after this negative one at the hands of TPTB at this HS and district.
I saw an engineer on TV last night who said that all this kid did was disassemble an old Radio Shack clock from the 1980s. Not really an invention at all.
Seeing as how this school is in my vicinity, I thought I would share some information that seems to escape many people from elsewhere. Irving public high schools are only about 14% white. This is hardly a hot-bed of white privilege or anything like that.
The facts are pretty clear. The kid made a device that resembled a bomb. There will be some disagreement about whether it was intentional or not, but the fact remains that it resembled a bomb. How do I know? A close family friend is a member of the bomb squad in Dallas. While it could be determined that this was not a bomb once it was examined, it is similar enough in components (less the explosive) to be reasonably assumed to be an explosive device by someone who looked at it. I love how people who don’t know any better say ‘real bombs don’t have timers’. Guess what? Some do, some do not. There is a reason why that is the ‘stereotype’ of bombs on TV.
The device ‘activated’ in class. We will not know if this was deliberate or not, but either the kid is adept at working with the electronics, or he is not. If he could really assemble it himself, he could manage a timer setting so it would not disturb his class.
We can either believe the kid’s story or we cannot. Most kids when confronted with trouble will lie. Those lies often take on a life of their own. Was he looking for attention himself or was he induced to do so by his father? We will never know that unless someone admits something. The school cannot defend itself due to privacy concerns. They cannot tell you about what the kid did (or did not do) in Middle School that made others afraid of him. You can indicate that it was race, but in that district he is far from unusual in being Muslim or of African or Middle Eastern ancestry. Why were the others not associated with being terrorists? The police suspected it was him (most likely) due to previous incidents in Middle School that cannot be discussed because he was too young.
The arrest was not about there being a bomb or not. A hoax need only have a reasonable expectation. The police do not convict, they only arrest and let the AG handle it from there. They did exactly what they are supposed to do. In Texas, you can be tried as an adult for many things at 14. In this case, he was not tried, just arrested.
Well, the Makers don’t actually know what this particular kid was trying to accomplish, either. The version of the story that made it to the press first was that he made a cool thing that he wanted to show to his engineering teacher. Since that story made it to the press first, it is indelibly printed as the truth into the minds of many people. This is what happens with all such stories.
In many K-12 schools, being called to the principal/vice-principal/dean’s office in the vast majority of cases means the child has done something to violate the code of conduct or otherwise implies they did something wrong. It’s worse when the school district already has had a demonstrated history of singling out kids from certain racial/religious minority groups for such disciplinary treatment and the local leaders demonstrated paranoia and prejudicial attitudes against such groups.
It’s similar to why calling the cops on someone, especially in some neighborhoods and among some racial/ethnic groups for frivolous reasons or worse, as a means to harass someone isn’t looked upon too kindly and gets the one doing so regarded to put it extremely kindly, an asshat.
Sometimes, this feeling is shared by cops like the NYPD officers who ended up reading the riot act against the complainer in my old apartment building publicly after finding out the neighbor made an unjustifiable noise complaint* against another neighbor at 4 pm because of normal background noise one would expect from 3 elementary school aged children coming home from school.
When those cops told off the complainer loudly and warned him that another call like that will prompt them to ARREST HIM for making a false complaint and wasting their time, the rest of us neighbors applauded them.
At the time, NYC noise laws were written as such so that quiet hours where noise cannot be excessive as to be heard outside of one's home were from 11 pm till sometime in the early morning coinciding with beginning of rush hour. As of 2007, this was changed so quiet hours start at 10 pm. In either case, the complainer had no grounds for making the complaint as he complained at 3-4 pm and in those hours, the noise from 3 elementary school kids coming home from school would be regarded as normal background noise one would be expected to put up with outside those quiet hours.
This is a poor analysis. I can’t count the number of times when another coder has called me over to show me a cool thing they made, and their demo breaks. And I can’t count the number of times I’ve called someone else over to show them a cool thing I’ve made, and my demo breaks. Prototypes don’t always work exactly the way we intend them to work.
There is something weird in the discussion after I last posted, that seems to have come out of nowhere, about whether someone halfway smart should be able to tell a bomb from an alarm clock, it is weird because it has absolutely nothing to do with what happened. In this case, for whatever reasons, it is obvious that the school nor the cops thought it was a bomb, and that doesn’t take a tech degree to figure out. The cops were called over an hour after the device was discovered, and the school was not evacuated when the device was discovered…which leads to a major question, why? If in fact they mistook it for a bomb, the actions make no sense. Living in NYC, where bomb scares are not uncommon, if they see a supicious package they think might be a bomb, they 1)clear the area 2)call the bomb squad…they don’t wait an hour to call the cops…and yes, this has happened with kids with potentially suspicious packages in schools, and they do exactly what I just outlined above (I also have first responder training, and since 9/11 they as part of the training teach about how to deal with suspicious objects like that, what to do). It is obvious that the school didn’t think it was a bomb from early on, so arguing about whether an English teacher or a principal or a cop should be able to tell the difference is irrelevant, it is apparent they did decide it wasn’t a bomb…
Which makes their later actions suspect. If they knew it wasn’t a bomb, why did they call the cops? If you argue they thought it was a hoax, then this isn’t about technical knowledge, this is about rational thinking, and in that people have every right to criticize the school and the cops. The kids actions simply don’t fit what a hoaxer would do, they wouldn’t have it out in the open like that, and wouldn’t declare it to be a clock if they wanted to shock people. The problem isn’t that the device wasn’t recognized as being a clock mechanism, because clearly it was, the problem is that the school, then the cops, drew the conclusion it was a hoax and decided to punish and humiliate the kid, and the only reason that makes any kind of logical sense, given the way the kid reputedly behaved, is that they were freaked out because he was muslim and decided he was guilty of doing something, what that was being as murky as a muddy river. If all he did was violate school policy, that might have warranted a suspension, but arrest?
cop: “What’s that?”
you: “My purse.”
cop: “It looks big enough to hold a bomb.”
you: “It’s a purse.”
cop: “WTF it just beeped!”
you: “That’s my phone, I just got a text.”
cop: “Your beeping purse could be a bomb.”
you: “It’s a purse. With a phone.”
cop: “I think it’s a hoax bomb.”
you: “It’s a purse.”
cop: “Let me look”
you: “Fine, see. Just a purse with a phone”
cop: “But I thought it was a bomb at first.”
you: “I told you it was a purse.”
cop: “But I was fooled, so it’s a hoax bomb.”
you: “I never claimed it was a bomb, so how can there be a hoax?”
cop: “You’re under arrest for carrying a hoax bomb.”
you: “Do you even know the definition of hoax?”
cop: “Don’t make me tase you for resisting arrest”
you: “Sigh”
Torveaux, for the umpteenth time in this thread, no one thought it was a bomb. If they did, they would have evacuated the school and they did not. The officials waited over an hour before they called the police and the bomb squad never showed up.
Nominated for world’s worst bomb squad member if he thought that thing resembles a bomb. The responding police not on the bomb squad knew it wasn’t a bomb. It displayed the time, thus resembles a clock.
You know what does reasonably resemble a bomb? A laptop battery pack, something carried into schools by nearly every kid these days and it is already hooked into a timing device.
Why don’t we stick to what we know really happened: a dark-skinned Muslim kid with electronics scared his English teacher and police overreacted. People keep trying to invent some evil intent on Ahmed’s part without any credible evidence that he had any, so George Zimmerman-like.
First, one group does not necessarily constitute the “Muslim community in Texas”.
Second, consider the possibility that they may have felt the need to be very tactful and not make waves because they’re afraid of prompting more anti-Muslim and xenophobic reactions towards themselves and this kid. Especially considering the mayor of that very town and school district have been documented to have fed into and instigated this “climate of fear” through their actions recently.
It’s a familiar historical pattern with many previous minority groups not blaming culpable groups or racism even when it’s clearly present to avoid making waves when they were undergoing periods when they were the minority groups being targeted for bigotry and greater punitive treatment in US history.
@Cobrat - let people speak for themselves. The article said “one of the largest Muslim groups in Texas.” So clearly not all but some large number of them.
I just clarified that that one group doesn’t constitute the “Muslim community in Texas”.
They also obviously don’t speak for Ahmed as he clearly stated in an interview that the police interrogators made him feel like a criminal and implicitly profiled him when they said something along the lines of “you’re one of them”.
Under certain conditions such as manufacturing defects, having the lithium ion metal itself within the laptop battery pack being directly exposed to oxygen or water/moisture, or being improperly charged, that battery back could actually be an explosive in itself.
Sony had a serious problem on its hands back in the late '00s because manufacturing defects which introduced impurities into the lithium ion metal during the battery manufacturing process caused many laptops across that industry to catch fire or even explode. It was widely covered and I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony had to pay huge sums to settle many potential lawsuits from not only consumers, but also laptop manufacturers themselves.
Also, Boeing had to ground their 787s for a period because of the same issues with lithium ion batteries in their aircraft.