What Is Wrong With US Schools?
A major problem is that some school administrations are total morons, like the one in Irving, Texas.
If you have seen the picture put out by the Irving PD, that is not what the student brought to school. He built his clock and had it inside the pencil box. He never said it was a bomb, so I don’t understand why the police arrested him. It was the teachers and administrators who said it was a bomb which constitutes a ‘bomb hoax’.
This is an international story with the BBC reporting Ahmed Mohamed’s huge invite list – Facebook, White House, Twitter.
Bombs with timers are extremely rare this century, with cellphones, and remote controllers the choice of terrorists and other people of ill intent. If you called in the police for every student with a cellphone, a garage door opener, or a remote key for a car, you would empty the high schools and fill up the jails.
The school district has refused to admit they screwed up and have given Ahmed a three-day suspension. I doubt he cares at this point because he has already indicated that he isn’t going back to that school, nor does he need to.
[You really need to check out the BBC article because the snark is strong among the reactions to this situation.]
4 comments
The case was quite clearly fully occupied with the LED panel and its associated driver board, the clock circuit panel, and the transformer. There was no place to put anything that even resembled explosives, nor any wires to attach to anything that could conceivably be explosives. Nobody could think it was a bomb, and in fact nobody did.
Think about it:
They didn’t evacuate the school, like you do when there’s a bomb.
They didn’t call a bomb squad – like you do when there’s a bomb
They didn’t get as far away from him as possible – like you do when there’s a bomb.
Then they put him and the clock in an office- not like you do when there’s a bomb
Then they waited with him for the police to arrive.
Then they put the clock in the same car as the police.
Then they took pictures of it.
They never thought he had a bomb.
I’m not sure *what* they were thinking. Probably nothing at all, like the idiot who told me “but that looks exactly like a bomb!” and I said to him, “oh? So where’s the explosives? All I see are electronic chips on circuit boards, and electronic chips don’t explode.” “Well there you are showing off your expensive engineering education again!” and I’m, like, “Dude. In what universe can it be a bomb if there’s nothing there that could explode? Even a high school student can figure out that’s not a bomb!”
The ignorance and racism, it be strong with these people… SIGH.
I have actually made inert devices for in-service training, and dealt with actual devices in military training, and that didn’t look like anything other than a clock. Play-Doh is a pretty good substitute if you are going for a hoax bomb, but you have to have something.
Refusing to admit they screwed up and to apologize is what will cost them if Ahmed’s father decides to sue the school.
Yeah, there just isn’t anything there that could be something that goes boom. No putty, no round dynamitey thingies, nothing. I have never seen a bomb, wouldn’t know an actual bomb if I saw it, but if I’m looking at this thing I *might* say “I don’t know what this is but it isn’t a bomb”, but I wouldn’t be, like “OMG it’s a bomb!” Or even half a bomb, since it has to be plugged in to make it work, as is obvious from the electrical plug and transformer, and who the hell designs a bomb that has to be plugged into a wall socket?!
The thing is, reading between the lines, the kid probably did warrant detention for disrupting the class. He said the alarm went off. Well, the only way the alarm could go off would be if he plugged it in, since as you saw, there are no batteries in that clock. And the only reason he would plug it in would be to show it to another kid in the class, hey look at this cool thing! Isn’t this cool! At which point you aren’t paying attention and are disrupting the class. Even back in my day you got a trip to the principal’s office.
And that’s where it stopped. Kid got fussed at, maybe got detention, maybe got sent home for the rest of the afternoon for disrupting class, and that was that.
But that was back when the world was sane, and before every Muslim was automatically a suicide bomber and every clock was automatically a bomb timer. Plus the cops and the school administrators knew who this kid’s father was, and knew that this kid’s father had criticized the mayor as a bigot. So there were lessons to be taught. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for the kid, the lessons learned were quite different…
BTW, it’s pretty clear the “invention” is just pieces of old clocks that he put together into the case. Probably a broken clock he found in the trash and repackaged. The next thing he would have done would be to find something with working switches and add back the switches the original clock had, I’m sure the old clock got thrown away because the switches went bad (since it looks like it’s one of those old 70’s style LED clocks). We’re not exactly talking genius level work, just good ole’ fashioned redneck engineering from my youth. If the school and cops hadn’t made a big deal out of it, nobody would ever know this kid’s name, because he’s likely headed for a job repairing computers, not designing computers. But hey, maybe this overreaction will get the kid into stuff way more advanced than repurposed trash. At this point, everything’s a net positive for this kid.
The mayor of Irving has made several public comments about “Sharia law” and not wanting it to be instituted in Texas, so she really is probably a Trump supporter.
There was a 9-volt battery connector, which was probably for back-up, but it wasn’t a kit, the boards were dipped, not hand soldered. If Radio Shack hadn’t folded he could have bought a circuit board kit and built a clock from a ‘cookbook’. A Raspberry Pi is about as base-level as kids can get their hands on these days. No more Heathkit/RS kits and parts so you can build whatever you want.
They supposedly had a technology teacher at the school. I don’t understand why they didn’t simply ask that person what the kid had, and then hit him with a detention for disrupting class. The Irving police chief has admitted the officers knew it wasn’t a bomb when the kid was cuffed.
Yes, the kid is going to benefit from the stupidity and bigotry of adults.