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Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project
garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"
That everyone should stick some coloured wires into cardboard tubes, then leave them lying about all over the place. The more the merrier.
Deleted
To an Idiocracy!
Public school administrators are leading the way!
I told ye it was forged by Lucifer himself!
I am not a crackpot.
What's the student supposed to get counseling for? The trauma the school put him through for no reason? More likely, so the school authorities can point to the fact that the kid got counseling to show something is wrong with him (and not them)
I'd like to recommend the authorities get some counseling. Either that, or a clue, but counseling is easier to come by.
And we wonder why US is behind all other nations in educating our young.
This is what happens when the students are smarter than the teachers.
In the wild there are no dumb lions tigers or bears. Only humanity subsidizes the continued existence of the stupid.
Don't do anything to attract attention to yourself ever.
The school, which has about 440 students in grades 6 to 8 and emphasizes technology skills, was initially put on lockdown while authorities responded.
...Stu
The real question is why are we letting people this stupid in charge of educating our children?
I mean, did anyone, for example, ask the kid what the device was and perhaps he said "It's a bomb! I'm going to blow myself and all of you up as a sacrifice for the great god Satan!" because had he said that, I'd suggest most of the rest of the article makes sense.
Yes, in a saner world, where most parties are responsible this would not have been been blown this big. But with the vitiated atmosphere and media constantly looking for flames to fan, the school officials decided, "OK either way they are going to get me. At least let me take the path where I look ridiculous but keep my job."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"I don't blame the school...it's the continued pussification of America that is the real problem at hand". Wish I had said that. WTF is going on with these school admin? Dude is staff a magnet school, got to expect to come across situations like this and be able to deal with it. I think the school staff needs counseling not the kid and his family. Pussies.....
This is part of the "nervous Nellie" reactions that have developed over the past few years. We should be encouraging inquisitiveness, exploration and learning in our children or we will just produce more mediocre administrators. Kids do things at home, bring them to school and show their friends. As long as it was not clearly a weapon or some other prohibited device there should not be a problem with it.
We are applying the same "sterile area" rules that supposedly exist in our airports to our schools. Will TSA be staffing the schools to keep out prohibited items?
Unless the child lied about what the device was it appears that the principal overreacted and did not apply too much common sense. It sounds like a pretty cool idea to use a Gatoraide bottle as a focusing point for a sonic device. Smart kid to think that through and to try something with it.
How many people who read /. have tried out other things like this in their childhood? Most of us have.
Tisha Hayes
Clearly parents that expect their child to be educated by morons who think anything with wires and a clear container must be a bomb, and don't take enough interest in the child to ask him what he's building, need counseling about their choice of schools. If the kid managed to build a motion detector at 11, that doesn't make him a genius, but they should be looking at advanced classes taught by competent and sane people.
I think the entire faculty and investigating police should get counseling over this drama too, preferably at the local unemployment office.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Tend to show the deranged thoughts of the teachers more than anything else... I remember my project netted me a month of drug counseling, because the application "could" of been used to grow cannabis.... The project was just a kid showing how plants grew differently in different media, hydroponically, with soil, with microorganisms that were advertised to help bind nitrogen in roots and increase growth, and with plant hormones. (All save hydroponically done in the same bag soil, just with the different additives...)
So my project was removed, and I was instructed not to build any more hydroponic settups in my spare time... Which my parents told me to ignore in my own home, but still.....
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
And this is how to terminate a possible promising career in electronics. Seriously, the kid will never be the same. He either won't touch on electronics anymore OR next time the project won't just look like a bomb.
So, it wasn't enough that the device from the poor kid (who showed some practical skills) was perfectly harmless, his home also had to be checked just in case he was a terrorist?
That's fucked up beyond 1984.
vertigo (Jesse Crittenden) says
Ironically while flying out of KMCI on my way to Iraq for the Air Force I had to go through the extra security screening. Mind you I'm in full military uniform, desert BDUs, boots, boonie hat, M4 in tow sure enough though I had to take off my boots and all metal objects and get the wand ran over me and extra check through my carry on. Let's ignore the fact that I'm carrying a rifle onboard!
Common sense sometimes does not apply.
In the case of the elderly lady I see nothing whatsoever wrong with her getting the same screening as everyone else. Terrorists will use whatever they can to exploit a weakness; that could be a handicapped person, the elderly and children.
Stop the world, it has gone mad, I want to get off.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I hope he doesn't let this episode interfere with his cool hobby. If he keeps on toying with electronics, he could end up with a really cool and useful job. An 11 year old making a motion detector -- how cool is that?
The kid is not the one who needs counseling.
How much do you want to bet that the student is a Muslim or looked like one?
They're doing such a great job. They deserve a reward.
couldn't figure out if this was hazardous? Clear container, no solid or liquid substance to be seen. Doesn't speak much for the teachers imo Maybe they thought it was a remote det. Who knows what kind of bs comes to people's frightened minds nowadays.
I thought I couldn't be more surprised by crazy school administrator and police stupidity, but I was wrong.
Everyone really should read TFA this time.
From TFA:
So, having electronics in your backpack is grounds for evacuating a TECH MAGNET?
Seriously?
What happened to the country that put the first man on the moon? We have gone completely insane.
Luque said the project was made of an empty half-liter Gatorade bottle with some wires and other electrical components attached. There was no substance inside.
This kid is clearly a genius. He has created the worlds first 100% hard vacuum, in a soft drink bottle no less. He has even eliminated zero point energy.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
When I was in college, I would periodically bring my electronics homework home from Albany to Phoenix. I would usually work on it the entire time tray tables were allowed. Often I didn't need a textbook, only my engineering paper (overpriced graph paper) and my calculator. I would often make those next to me nervous, but obviously I couldn't harm anyone with paper and a pencil. Well, significantly anyway.
As I got to the intermediate classes, I would often find myself with schematics, a bag of chips and wires, and a breadboard. Again, plenty of time to just sit there, I would wire up my breadboard with the chips, wires, and my Leatherman. I had more than a few flight attendants strike up a conversation with me long enough to find out that I was going home / to school, was an engineering student, and was working on a finite state machine / simple computer / complicated blinky light thing. "Wanna see? This is so cool! Watch these eight lights blink! I can program it with these switches!" The only time the conversation lasted even a sentence longer was when I was building laser tag. "No, it doesn't actually have any lasers, they just use that name because it sounds cool. It actually works like your remote control to your TV."
Even at the time, I was fully aware that any technical work done in a public place would draw the skepticism, imagination, and periodically, fear of those around me. Of course, this was in the mid 90's. Times and personal liberties on airplanes in particular are very different. Now, they'd throw a fit if I tried to take my Leatherman near the plane, let alone the chips and bundle of wires running off a 9 volt. I'm much more mature now, and now I see no reason to make people uncomfortable on an airplane in order to stretch their preconceptions.
The kid and his parents now learned a valuable lesson. Work transparently. Don't hide it in a bottle. When it's complete, more times than not, it shouldn't have a top case. If it needs a case, no external wires should be visible.
What a fuckwhit - the school principal should be fired.
He bolted out of bed and carefully defused the alarm clock before it went off, after concluding that... it was a bomb.
He went to shave, but before turning it on decided to throw the razor out the window after concluding that... it was a bomb.
He decided not to make toast after concluding that the toaster was...
Better not drive, he thought...
Got on a bus. There was a guy with a radio. He called 911. Got off the bus before the police arrived though.
Arrived at school. Reported science fair project as possible bomb.
Police showed up at school. Hey? Are you the guy who called 911?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If you RTFA, it looks like the cops are saying that they should get counseling because the kid and parents were upset by the incident.
Regardless of whether the search was reasonable, do you realize how misled you (and many others, including those who've responded to you) have been by the summary's "scare quotes"? The summary makes it sounds like the kid is being sent in for "reprogramming".
I'm probably wasting my time typing this, because it won't change anything anyway. Slashdotters will primarily continue to curse the way the government misleads the citizens, then turn around and fall for this kind of crap.
next time the project won't just look like a bomb
Even if it is one...
[The Universe] has gone offline.
...his home also had to be checked...
Yes, that's the most shocking part of the story to me as well. I'm not sure I'd be very cooperative with the authorities if I were the parents. I think I'd turn it into yet another learning moment, showing the kid how not to bow unquestioningly to authority. I'd have called an attorney, and politely declined the search until a proper warrant was served.
I'm guessing the parents were horrified to learn of the inconvenience imposed by the morons in charge, and wanted to get it over quickly and prove that their kid was good, so I don't fault them at all for cooperating. But they weren't responsible for the hysteria, and they shouldn't have been pressured to comply. It's as if the authorities allowed the administration to hold the entire school hostage, until this unfortunate family was forced to prove its own innocence. It's quite insane.
In order to sue the fuck out of those idiots, I mean.
TFA leaves me with a ton of questions. Wouldn't his teacher have known of this project (assuming that science projects are for school)? I don't recall getting the assignment, "Make a science project", in school. My teachers always checked in every step of the way.
Why did they think it was a bomb? Did the kid deny it was a bomb? I usually don't think of 11 year olds as making explosives with complicated electronic detonators. Did the kid claim it was a bomb jokingly or just to be difficult?
What is the counseling recommended for? Is it because the kid and family are upset that all this happened (understandable) or because he's a troublemaker/prankster kid who's causing problems?
The kid who made the explosive with baking soda and vinegar (or water and dry ice) is getting an A+.
There's a new DVD out called The War on Kids. The thesis is that schools are prisons and are about surveillance, metal detectors, and control. One of the best parts is where they are receiving a tour through a school, and they ask to see the library, which has a high-security metal door with metal grate over the glass. The principal can't find the key and asks, "did you really need to get in here?"
Learning is against school policy.
That's fucked up beyond 1984.
This is nothing like 1984. 1984 was about censorship and oppression, this is just paranoia. It probably happened due to a combination of the fear of terrorism and people's fear of technology they can't understand. Not they I don't think this both sad and slightly scary, but there are other things that can be wrong with society than trying to imitate 1984
Here's the Contact Us page for Millennial Tech Middle School.
http://www.mtechmiddle.org/apps/contact/?rn=8783875
Maybe if enough people ask, they'll actually tell someone why they have a complete fucking moron in a position of scholastic authority over their kids.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
My younger brother used to get in trouble for telling his math and science teachers that they were fools and idiots when they asked him questions in class. Nothing was very challenging to him. He dropped out after the 10th grade.
He went to Community College, got straight A's. He got into an engineering program at a public university, got almost straight A's. Now he's finished his PhD at the top engineering school in the country, in his field, MIT.
American schools are there to train the rank and file. In fact everyone that I know that works in a scientific field had dangerous aspirations in their teenage years, and didn't think much of the education our systems were providing. It became clear to all of us that if we cared to actually learn anything, it would be on our own.
Sounds to me like one of those old b-rated Sci-Fi movies:
Why even bother having the science fair if projects are going to get that kind of reaction?
Not very large, but it did make an enormous kaboom, and rendered the locker in which it detonated somewhat egg-shaped.
And no, it was not me.
I actually read TFA, and it states, as the summary quotes, "Apparently, the student violated school policies", but the article doesn't state the policy in question. It is hard to know if this is a case of stupid overreaction or a real violation of the rules. Does anyone know the exact wording of this "policy"?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
that vice-principal is a terrorist. ;)
It’s exactly what the dictionary says. (I don’t mean the 11th edition of the newspeak one, that you may think of.
He terrorizes an 11 year old child. (Think of the children!) He terrorizes the whole family. He causes fear, terror that requires police intervention.
I say, make an example and ship him to Gitmo, in exchange for a honest American who sits down there just because his parents immigrated from the wrong country. ;)
I’d call that the American spirit!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
.. you need councelling. :-)
My problem is that I really have to start memorising a new series of words for this sort of crap. It makes "moron" a compliment, which isn't quite my intention. Even "room temperature IQ" won't do unless you qualify that that is at the North Pole with the windows open.. Sjeez.
Insert
Taking the same thing into airport likely will make you see some real hard time vs what this kid got.
Given how 'cooperative' his parents were with the authorities, most likely. Pity, though, few have such enthusiasm so young.
If such a thing had happened to me, my parents would've been in school the next morning to demand a public apology from both the school and the vice-principal himself, as well as any required paperwork necessary to transfer me to another school.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Perhaps the new rule should be : Thou shall make no device that your principal can not understand".
I'll bet what really happened was that the kid made what is called a trembler which is sometimes used by bomb builders to create a trigger if any movement what so ever occurs to the bomb. There are legitimate uses of tremblers which include keeping large fans from destroying everything in sight if they get out of balance. These normally have a drop of mercury sitting in a tiny dimple such that shaking cause the droplet to lift out of the dimple and complete a circuit between two plates of metal, one above and one below the droplet. Obviously ideas like a pendulum can also be used. An 11 year old coming up with an actual, useful and proven device is wonderful. He may have had an interest in earthquake detection or many other legitimate pursuits.
Next, he'll invent a bomb that doesn't look like a science project.
My friends and I used to carry our BB guns around the suburban neighborhood. By today's standards we would be considered, if not terrorists, at least in serious needs of counseling and immediate suspension from school.
Im not sure which is worse, the fact the school is so fucking full of idiots they would just see a kid with a plastic bottle and call the police or that they would suggest the kid and his family get counseling because the kid showed some sign of independant thought and intelligence.
Let us say it was really a wolf. Then the very same villagers would be all over the shepherd boy. "What? There was this wolf! With claws! And teeth! And the clueless boy didn't cry wolf. When is he going to learn that wild animals are constantly attacking our herds."
Yes, that boy better keep crying wolf if he wants to be certain that people will rush to help him when a real wolf shows up.
The real problem is lawsuits. If the school officials get it wrong (and lets face it school kids HAVE attacked their school in the past) then they are sued, so nobody plays it safe anymore.
One of the reason the US medical bill is through the roof is that because if a patient demands X procedure while the doctor knows it is silly, he gets it, because else he might sue.
Say you are a station attendant and see a bag that seems to have been left behind. In the "real" world, you take a look, the changes of it being a bomb are remote and even if it is, bombs rarely explode just by looking. BUT what if you can be sued if you get it wrong? Loose not just your life (and nobody thinks they are going to die) but every thing you own? (Silly? Count the doctors that smoke or drink or drive without a seatbelt but do have malpractice insurance.)
If you are sued for millions if you don't follow the book, you follow the book. And if you don't you loose your insurance and the first court case could bankrupt you.
Calling the people involved stupid is the easy lazy answer. The real problem is the sue happy culture of the US, where any slightest mistake anyone not following the rule book to the letter can be sued for millions. If I saw an American have a heart attack, I would let them die. I could be sued for breaking a rib while saving their lives. No thanks.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No need to involve the student. This isn't a kid prodigy building an atomic reactor; the device sounds (and likely was) simple in composition and principle. Just turn to the science teacher and say "That's not a bomb, is it?" and the science teacher will respond with "Oh, no, it's a simple little device for detecting motion made out of a plastic bottle, quite ingenious really, especially at this kid's grade level, gave it an 'A'."
And that would be that.
This principal ought to be then stripped in public, beaten senseless with a cane, then tarred, then feathered, then made fun of by an entire class of pointing science fair students.
And then they ought to be fired.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Just a few days ago I read an article about DARPA complaining that not enough students were taking science degrees. Now we see why! Here is a principal at a tech magnet school, seriously unqualified, that cannot discriminate a simple electronic device from a bomb. The real question is exactly who hired this incompetent idiot to administer students that are obviously smarter them himself and the HR person. Instead of panicking and calling 911 he might have called one of the science teachers first. But no, he went into chicken little mode and assumed that Armageddon was at hand.
woosh...
I'm pretty sure that's what the OP was implying
This is a public school for god's sake, it's going to be CYA all the way now.
If you want intelligent interaction talk to librarians, not school administrators.
What we should all do is send letters of protest to the school. I have just written them asking them to apologize to the student and his family. I have suggested that the vice principal in question should be counseled on the proper way to react in such a situation. I know the chances of the school issuing an apology is low, but enough of public pressure will eventually force them to. And anyone who lives near this school should be their for the next board meeting to protest what has been done. You can contact them here: http://www.mtechmiddle.org/apps/contact/
Kid, keep up the good work, and move to a school with smarter officials.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
that the article states the middle school "emphasizes technology skills".
And people wonder why science and technology are on the decline in the US.
Someone set us up the bomb!!!
We get signal!!!
How are you idiots??? All your sense are belong to us!!!
...they send home a "Rules and Policies" that must be signed by the Parents and the Student. I cross-out any ambiguous and ill-defined sections, initial them, then sign the document.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
next time the project won't just look like a bomb
Even if it is one...
No, especially if it is one: "If you make a bomb, make sure it doesn't look like one, and don't show it to your friends before setting it off." That 11 year-old and a lot of his friends will certainly have learned that lesson, but I must admit I'm surprised at the school's curriculum.
Counseling for what? The trauma of being accused of being a bomber? I hope that's what it is, and not the fact that the kid has a hobby and was showing it off to kids.
When I was in middle school, the school got evacuated because of a kid with a CD player in his locker. It was on pause, and the CD was in kinda crooked, making a faint ticking sound. They definitely didn't even bother to ask the kid, because he was in the same class as me (gym, mind you, so we were stuck standing outside in shorts in 30F weather. And no, sonny, walking to your house across the street is NOT okay), and got hauled off by the cops.
In the same middle school, I pretty much was all the teachers' techie. As a result, I had the admin password to all the classroom computers. My last year there I was suspended for knowing the password (even though the teachers tried to defend me).
Really think I'll be homeschooling my own children. Had I been this kid's dad, I'd have popped that vice principal square in the teeth.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
An excerpt from "The Underground History of American Education":
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
Solve this problem and school will heal itself: children know that schooling is not fair, not honest, not driven by integrity. They know they are devalued in classes and grades, that the institution is indifferent to them as individuals. The rhetoric of caring contradicts what school procedure and content say, that many children have no tolerable future and most have a sharply proscribed one. The problem is structural. School has been built to serve a society of associations: corporations, institutions, and agencies. Kids know this instinctively. How should they feel about it? How should we?
As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom you have little trouble figuring out why, in the nature of things, government schools and those private schools which imitate the government model have to make most children dumb, allowing only a few to escape the trap. The problem stems from the structure of our economy and social organization. When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates--these things are inhuman conspiracies all right, but not conspiracies of people against people, although circumstances make them appear so. School is a conflict pitting the needs of social machinery against the needs of the human spirit. It is a war of mechanism against flesh and blood, self-maintaining social mechanisms that only require human architects to get launched.
I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises--no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system.
Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.
Schools got the way they were at the start of the twentieth century as part of a vast, intensely engineered social revolution in which all major institutions were overhauled to wo
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This is a prime example of shifting responsibility or blame. The principal had the opportunity to get an explanation from the student and react rationally. He or she choose to push the panic button to pass off any decision making that could cause questions later by other idiot politically correct over reactionary people. So what do we see after all this? We see the principal do the usual dodge that those in positions of authority always do. He successfully pushed the blame over to this poor 11 year old student for this mess of over reaction the principal actually created. This is so typical of the problems we have today where those in a position of responsibility manage to pass the blame for being stupid onto some poor sap less able to defend themselves. This poor 11yr. old student had no real chance to defend himself from this and and it seems that it was agreed the best way to protect the authority of the school was to blame the kid for everything. It would seem his parents are less than capable in taking on the establishment to right this wrong than you would hope. This would be so wrong if this was a rational world. Unfortunately once again, we see it isn't.
Now I understand! This is the 'socialization' that the home schooled kids are missing!
How can anyone appoint such a moron as a vice principal ?
Is there no aim for excellence in education no more ?
How is America going to compete against the world with morons like that in the school system ?
From TFA: ... "There will be no (criminal) charges whatsoever," Luque said. ..." ... Students were evacuated from Millennial Tech Magnet Middle School in the Chollas View neighborhood Friday afternoon after an 11-year-old student ..."
"
"
That's right. Criminal charges against an 11-year old.
As it turns out, California has no Minimum Age for Criminal Responsibility (MACR), so if they wanted to, they could have brought charges against the student.
Now that;s interestingly ambitious.
I assume teachers aren't allowed to wear wedding rings? They are, after all, a public display of affections to whoever they are married with...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Back when I was a kid (in the 70s), half the fun of life (being a geek, even back then) was playing with electronics, chemistry and whatever came to hand.. I make all kinds of things that went bang quite effectively, made funny coloured smoke, and had wires coming from all angles. In my secondary school (in the 80s), my teachers would actually take an interest in the weird things I'd created, and made suggestions on doing it better.. This nurtured my creative side quite nicely.. I still get the soldering iron out now and then if I need devices that aren't generally available, but I'm capable of making myself..
This approach still holds true in China, Russia, and really most of the countries out there apart from US/UK and a few of the other Western countries.. This means they're getting better scope to broaden their horizons and invent from an early age. Given a broader scope of inventive populace, and a greater comfort with the learning, methinks it's only a matter of time until we legislate and worry ourselves into being second rate nations due to lack of the next bright and creative generation..
Has anyone heard of this sort of thing commonly occurring outside of US schools?
I don't want to sound like a self-righteous Canadian, but I've worked in three school districts and I really don't see that kind of fear-of-technology/intelligence happening here. I do see teachers that aren't great with technology, but I haven't met anyone that is outright paranoid like those in these type of stories (which seem to be rather frequent over the last few years).
So does anyone in Canada/Europe/Australia/Asia/etc have similar stories, or is there something really, really weird with the US Education system?
Police and fire officials also will not seek to recover costs associated with responding to the incident, the spokesman said.
Translation: We realize we screwed up and don't want to be laughed at in court.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Someone please find these asshats emails and post them here ! 2 million emails jamming the local system should help get the point across although it will probably just make the poor admins life miserable. !We really need to get rid of clowns like these (the school authorities involved). It is a constant irritation that they are "not filing charges". THEY (the school authorities involved) should be charged and it should be dam serious enough to make them think about throwing a families life into disarray the next time. As for local police, well you can't fix stupid.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
"There will be no (criminal) charges whatsoever," Luque said.
But there should be some charges here. Alas, there's no Criminal Stupidity laws on the books that could be leveled at the vice principal.
When I was at High School I was caught by one of the deans making black powder in a science lab. Instead of taking the opportunity to turn the incident in to a lesson in basic safety or chemistry this teacher went nuts. I remember the science teacher trying to step in and do the right thing. I was threatened with expulsion. My parents were called. I clearly remember him calling me amongst various things , 'A clear threat to society'. What I was actually interested in at the time was model rocketry not bomb making. But like any half smart 13 year old I was capable of both. I figured since had labeled me in his tiny mind as a threat the onus was on me to deliver his nightmare. The very next day this same teacher found under his chair in the teachers staff room exactly what he was afraid of. A plastic lunch box containing two steel pipes a stereo counter and some simple electronics to drive it all. It looked for all the world on first inspection like every bomb MacGyver has ever tried to diffuse. Until you looked closer and saw that the metal tubes were packed with tissue. I was told later that the teacher actually wet himself in the process of trying to diffuse it like the big hero that he was. In those days where I lived we did not have any special response unit for these things. He called the fire department. The whole school was ordered to line up outside on a series of tennis courts. In a strange way rather than confirming that he was right about me the incident merely confirmed that he was a complete idiot. I remember one of the Fireman walking past holding the lunch box and laughing. Anyway the point I was going to make was that if your going to label bright intelligent children as threats when they are merely exploring the world and not intent on hurting anyone then fully expect them to confirm your worst fears 10 times over and then some. I might also ad that this experience was the start for me of a long war of hatred with all forms of authority. Thankfully it was a war I won!
The call to the police is what happens when you entrust the education of your children to a bunch of underachieving liberal arts majors. The extraordinarily poor journalism is yet another monument to the very best in liberal arts education. The only good thing to come of this: it will definitely push the obviously bright 11-year-old and his cohorts into the hard sciences and engineering. That's one mark for the good guys.
If they treated kids like this in the 70's, I would have been declared a threat to the free world. I taught myself how to solder when I was 10, and I was into building all kinds of electronics kits and projects. I was also into model rocketry and built multi-stage rockets capable of reaching altitudes of 2500 ft. I brought crap to school to show my class all the time. Luckily, I didn't grow up to be an international terrorist - I became an engineer. We are in deep trouble when our education system treats the kids that should be leading us to the next technology leap forward as criminals.
This has to end! Since 9/11, PARANOIA has completely taken over in the USA!! Al Quaida must be SO happy-as their terrorism has certainly succeeded FAR more then in their wildest dreams! The single best thing we could have done was give the third FINGER to Al Quaida, and gone about our normal business. But we STUPID Americans did not-and now we're a scared bunch of wussies for it!!!
People has to build gadgets on his normal lifes. Everyone sould be allowed. If some guy mistake it for a bomb, is his mistake, not the creator of the artifact. The kid sould not be in any way demoralized by this.
-Woof woof woof!
I thought it would too, but as an embedded developer, I've had to fly across the world carrying strange devices with wires and chips all over the place. Surprisingly it is rare that I get stopped and have to take it apart to show what it is. Usually when I do, I get the feeling that the security guards are more curious about what they are looking at than that they have any fear over it being a bomb. Maybe if I were Iranian or wore a turban I would get a different response, maybe I will try the turban thing sometime.
Qxe4
This is true. About 10 years ago, I was diagnosed with pertussis (whooping cough). How? My daughter and I had had similar symptoms for about 4 months (mostly consisting of coughing up a lung). I told the doctor that my daughter had been diagnosed with pertussis and asked for the test. The asshole said, "Have you been vaccinated?" I said "Yes." He said, "You don't have it, then!". I had to threaten him to get the test, and sure enough it came back positive. Two weeks with the proper antibiotics, and my condition cleared up.
Some doctors really are assholes.
P.S. I know that the singular of data is not "anecdote".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
he and his family need to move to a country that values science over superstition and is in general, more sanely run than the USA.
The principal and vice-principal of this allegedly "technical" high school should be fired and blacklisted, of course, but they'll probably get promoted instead.
Tech Public Policy stuff
War on Terror? What terror? More people are killed in a day in road accidents than are killed in a year in terrorist actions.
No one should believe the government anymore.
So much resource for ... nothing.
At some point we need to just teach people what a bomb actually looks like. It's not as if a bottle of Gatorade with wires sticking out of it looks like a bomb. Sure, if you see a stick of dynamite , fertilizer, or even just a lump of clay inside that those wires are attached too -- then that's suspicious. But at some point people need to realize that ELECTRONICS BY THEMSELVES do not just blow up. A circuit board and a wire are merely one component of an explosive device. There has to be something capable of exploding somewhere in the mix, and probably not just a tiny bit of something.
We have this case, the ATHF litebrites, the shirt with lights on it at the airport, etc, etc. How hard is it to understand this: WIRES BY THEMSELVES DO NOT A BOMB MAKE. NO QUANTITY OF WIRES WILL TURN INTO A BOMB. Christ.
Posting anonymously so I don't get arrested for knowing what a bomb should look like.
About seven years ago in New Zealand one of my classmates made an actual setup to detonate
C4 as part of a class project. He loaded the thing with play dough, a couple of flashing LEDs and
a speaker.
The teachers didn't seem to mind.
Of course this was in a country school, hunting and blowing stuff up where both popular hobbies.
Not forgivable. This was an empty Gatorade bottle with some electronics attached. What did they suspect was in it? Highly combustible oxygen?
What next, a kitchen egg timer could be mistaken as a bomb and a Home Economics class evacuated?
Terrorism hysteria has turned into insanity. I will seriously be neither surprised when we hear more about everyday objects coming under suspicion. I'm waiting to hear about someone wearing adult incontinence diapers being stripped searched at an airport because they were suspected of having an underwear.
Who really knows what a bomb looks like, except for the experts? Most people go off they've seen in the movies no doubt. In the realy world bombs don't have lots of red and blue wires with a red-led countdown timer that beeps every second. One would assume someone making a bomb would attempt to mask what it is. For example, shoe-bomber and underwear bombers.
I might resist the practical joke I had in mind, duct taping an old cellphone and wires to a coke can and putting it on my co-workers desk.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Doesn't anyone else wonder how the motion detector works?
I'm thinking micro-changes in air density.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
. . . a principal at another school suspends a student after suspecting the student was carrying a dangerous pointed weapon. Turns out it was a pen.
Can I bum a sig?
What did the kid say to the cops that made the cops pursue bomb disposal and authorities recommend family counseling?
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
You and people like you are exactly why the situation in the USA gets ever worse.
...
You are constantly obsessed with un-real threats, fixing problems that don't exist, and simply a GENERAL denial of common sense, justified on stupid rules and panicky process. Eg TSA
This kid was VICTIMIZED, should sue the vice-principle, inter alia, for slander of reputation (in his trade of profession, as a school student) and for distress and the suit should enjoin the school Board, and the County. His parents should have at least one with balls.
He is entitles to an APOLOGY, DAMAGES, and full reparation of his REPUTATION, and equal publicity, if necessary paid for by the Board, and since the costs were vicarious should be sanctioned across the Board members by a levy.
Most of the teachers probably rolled their eyes at the moron. The 'upper' staff is usually buddies of someone who knows someone. You do not get that job by actually by being good at it. Those upper jobs are a 'scratch my back' sort of cushy job. Rich donating old lady to supper of the schools... "Hey can you give my nephew a good job he isnt too good at anything" sort of job...
Most politics in the united states works this way. It is rarely about doing the right thing and about what lobbyist is screaming the loudest at the moment and who paid the most in campaign contributions.
To give you an idea how this works my uncle who owed a good sum of money to the "tax guys" told me this little gem "get in trouble with the IRS and you can make the problem go away with a 5k 'campaign' contribution to your local congress critter". His 'tax problem' went away. Its not a 'bribe' per se but it sure looks like one to me. You would be shocked to see how often this happens. Especially on the state level.
What did they suspect was in it? Highly combustible oxygen?
They suspected it might contain nitrogen, which can be used by terrorists to make ammonium nitrate.
They may have students a lot like Dylan Klebold in their school, and don't know how to ensure that they don't go off the deep end, so they do the best they can.
Forensic analysis of the massacre concluded that it was orchestrated by Eric Harris, who was a clinical psychopath. Dylan Klebold was just a maladjusted doofus that Harris took along for the ride.
No I wouldn't, what you suggest is both stupid and immoral, demand a jury trial, go in the box and say "I did my best" you are so infested by dishonest lawyers and dumbkopfen that you cannot see the clearly 'The morally correct path'.
Since you don't pay 'costs in cause' in the USA there is no downside to bringing unjustified suit.
You are soooo right and I am soooo glad. It gives me some hope for the future.
On the other hand, I have a sister-in-law who teaches special education (learning disable and emotionally behaviorally disturbed) at a middle school (~11-14 year olds) One of her kids brought an UZ to school one day to impress his friends or bullies. Probably illegal and a violation of school policy. I don't think that that school was know for its technology program though. I hope the vice-principal gets counselling it sure seems like a teachable moment for him, even if he did exactly the right thing.
Back in early high school (2002 maybe?) I almost got suspended for something similar. I had built some sort of analog-based electronic musical instrument on a breadboard for a class.
During the early stages of construction I put a small electrolytic cap on backwards. A few minutes after hooking everything up the capacitor blew with a loud snap. They thought I had built a bomb and questioned if I had used gunpowder and explosives and all kinds of crap. In the end nothing came of it, but I spent a few days in the principal's office and for after-school counseling (which I remember more as after-school interrogation to get me to say I had used gunpowder).
School principal, FAIL. Fucking moron. I had the FBI called on me in 10th grade in 74 for doing the math to calculate the critical mass of U235
... for K-12 education for exactly this reason.
New Economic Perspectives
"Luque said the project was made of an empty half-liter Gatorade bottle with some wires and other electrical components attached. There was no substance inside."
How in the !#$!#$! could a bomb consist of an *empty* container? What, was the plastic bottle the explosive? The electronic components? What?
What's empty is the head of the morons that thought the thing was dangerous, and thus put this student, his family, and the whole school through this ordeal when some COMMON SENSE could have told them there was nothing dangerous.
And what kind of message does this event send? Don't ever, ever play with wires, electronic components and bottles -- dangerous! Might be mistaken for a bomb!
You obviously don't read very well. It took me about ten seconds to spot the violation:
ACADEMIC HONESTY POLICY ... students shall not engage inClearly, the student is guilty of altering materials (wires and glue) and equipment (Gatorade bottle and electronics) and should be thoroughly counseled to avoid future infractions.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
This makes me SICK...absolutey SICK! There REALLY is no hope for America if THIS is a random sample example of our educators today... Gee, thanks, Mr. Vice Principal...you may have just scared off another Abert Einstein or Stephen Hawking by your Neanderthal approach to academics... Life really is survival of the fittest, and I think I hear America's fat lady singing... Shame on you...
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1513326&cid=30795974
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
The Principal has no principles! Hes an idiot, a moron, someone who never ever participated in a science project. I have a whole household of empty old containers with wires sticking out. A gatorade bottle is excellent as an electronics case: its dry when empty, lightweight, probably see-through, so that you can actually see no explosive materials inside.... Its an electronics project for a science fair. There is scientific stuff inside. I hate to call the principal a mentally challenged fucktard, I hate to use the Bart Simpson word "Craptacular" when describing his actions, but sadly, its the most appropriate adjective for this situation. I'm very very disappointed. Its much like the US government arresting scientists doing work on biological contagens like anthrax 5 years ago. No they are not terrorists, stop treating them like they are. This is very much a case of being judge, jury and executioner without there being any crime. STOP IT, FUCKING STOP IT NOW!
The people that overreact to shit like this almost certainly have too much time on their hands. I was working for HP. One of the computers in my cubicle was running an HP approved Linux distro, installed by HP personnel, and not reconfigured by me. It randomly cycled through screen savers, including the one that displayed messages from the fortune files. One of the fortune files was the Zippy the pinhead one that contained the quote "I want to kill everyone here with a cute, colorful hydrogen bomb!" Now imagine the reaction of their highly trained, skilled rent-a-cop upon seeing this at 3am while on rounds. And the overreaction of their security staff, assuming I must be a dangerous sociopath because this was on MY machine, and I am obviously responsible for anything displayed on my machine. The result -- I was suspended for a week until they straightened it out. With pay. I was on the critical path for our project, which means project delivery was delayed for a week due to these dick heads. One of my coworkers investigated and explained it to them (which was difficult, since they had recorded the quote incorrectly) and I finally got called back to work. Nope, they never apologized or admitted their mistake in any way, shape or form. And of course I spent that one week hiatus applying for better jobs, one of which came through about a month later.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I read the policy page as well, interestingly absent was anything about weapons or electronics at all. But I found another example about why that school is retarded.
This is a middle school right? Like 5th to 8th grade?
Apparently you can't RIDE YOUR BIKE anywhere on the campus. It's not allowed because it could create an unsafe environment. And this is in sunny all year San Diego. Yeah right...
Environment: .... " the following behaviors cannot occur:
Skateboarding, Roller skating, or bike riding on campus
Cell phone use before or afterschool
Gum on the walk ways or on any campus furniture
Vandalism – defacing of or damage to school or private property, including:
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
"would of went down" - so if the choice is between the inept school officials and you, I am really worried.
They may think this is their justification: "Staff, parents, and students agree that we should follow guidelines for Socially Responsible Behavior during the school day and at all school sponsored events.Socially Responsible Behavior includes, but is not limited to..." (my italics) -- i.e. 'we can make up the rules after the event'. The speciousness of a supposed policy document containing this sort of language should be obvious to reasonable people, but I cannot say what position the law would take on it.
The official statements appear to be trying to give the impression that the student was at fault, without actually saying, much less doing, anything that would get their sorry asses sued.
All that for a photo detector. And in a school that prides itself on
technology education. I find it laughable that a school that promotes
areas of education that require a critical thought process has
administrators that seem to be exempt from the same.
Fear has taken over our educational system to the detriment of
it's original purpose which is to educate our children not imprison
them for 7 hours a day.
What do you think an 11 year old who clearly has the brains to build something like this now and has been put through the trauma will feel like doing when he is a little older and has more brains and means to get other materials... Perhaps this was why the counseling was recommended... To make sure this boy's life is not forever altered for worse from this point on... Scary stuff.
Ok, here's an 11 year old carrying a gatorade bottle filled with electronics and wires. Now, this may be suspicious, after all, why should an 11 year old carry a Gatorade bottle filled with electronics and wires. If, yes if, it was not time to hand in his friggin' science project! What's the principal going to do when they have a science fair? Evacuate the school and blow the whole crap up just to be sure because the assembly place is filled with funky looking items?
Or was it one of those really prissy schools where you'd expect your kids to come with rapid-prototyped shell for their projects and someone housing it in a Gatorade bottle is looking suspiciously poor? What the fuck did he expect the science project to be? Another potatoe-battery?
That kid should get an award for coming up with that idea (ok, provided his parents didn't really do the work, but let's assume the best here). 11 year old builds a motion detector in a Gatorade bottle, that's genius! Instead now he'll probably think he did something bad, toss the whole science crap and follow the teenage dream: Become the next American Idol.
Great. Effing great. Good job America, again you managed to punish someone for trying to be anything but an utter moron.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Have we really deteriorated to the point where a supposedly educated person believes that an 11 year old has the intelligence to safely make a bomb? I know we got some pretty smart kids out their but with the state of the American education system get real. That vice-principal is the one that needs counseling or at the very least put in the corner with a dunce cap on. MORON!
After all this is a science school, isn't it? So the boy needs counseling for doing what the very purpose the school got built for?
Are there any sane people left over there or has everyone turned manic and totally crazy already? I would really like to visit the U.S. one day but I'm dead scared, not of terrorists but to get snatched by some officials because I wear the wrong colored t-shirt or the like.
I found a chainsaw in the garbage on the way to school. Being the collector/fixer that I am, I grabbed the chainsaw and took it to school with me. My friends made jokes. None of the staff even batted an eye as a 14-year-old nonchalantly carried a chainsaw to his locker. I fixed the saw the next day in auto shop. And for the next 7 months, a fueled up and ready-to-go chainsaw sat in my locker because my mom would freak out if I brought home more "junk". A friend got on to a school bus with a rifle. It was seized solid, and wouldn't have fired at all. He walked right into the school with it. AFAIK, nobody freaked on him. It was to be used as a prop for the school play. Dave now has a PhD. Columbine really changed things.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Cuz like... electronics can explode or something. Used to be you needed explosive materials to make a bomb, but they miniaturized and modernized and now you can do that with a chip.
This one time, my son opened up the VCR and I was SHOCKED to see that it was full of bombs! Just like in 24 or CSI or something. I called the police on him.
Anyway the bomb experts say no it wasn't bombs, it was just electronics. Still. Pretty scary.
I call your response "a lazy response to a lazy post", because it seems that you were too lazy to proofread it.
and lets face it school
"and, let's face it, school".
nobody plays it safe
"everybody" (if you meant what I think you meant).
One of the reason
"reasons".
the US medical bill
"U.S. medical costs", maybe?
is that because if
"is that if" or "is because if".
... and so on, and so on.
Also, "lose" is spelled with one "o".
... the following behaviors cannot occur: ... Cell phone use before or afterschool
What gives them the right or ability to enforce what students do outside of the school building? FCC permit for jamming equipment? Consider for a moment that you're not god, bastards.
I understand the issues at hande, I would expect your garden variety administrator might not be able to differentiate between a motion sensor and a bomb. The general masses don't always have a firm grasp on technology. I deal with this all the time. A person has no problem believing that there is this huge network, with millions, even billions of computers that spans the entire planet, connected by copper wires, fiber optics, and even satellite. This amazingly complex contraption can allow them to hold a live conversation with both audio and video with a person on the other side of the planet, and it won't cost them a thing. They download a whole CD of music or a movie in a matter of minutes. All of this is easily believable. However, a computer controlled lightswitch is CLEARLY fake, as there's NO possible way to do that.
I don't doubt that your average school administrator might suffer from the same technological myopia. They know what a stereo, TV , computer, flashlight, and cellphone look like. But get outside of that comfort zone and present them with an uncovered circuit board and some loose wires.... well.. that looks like a bomb, and they will react accordingly. This in and of itself is not surprising. What IS surprising is the fact that we're talking about a tech school here. You would assume that the bar would be set slightly higher in this circumstance. Enough to assume that those who teach and administrate at the school had at least an introductory electronics course at SOME point. One would assume anyway.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
The student WAS wearing an ATHF shirt.
So, you're suggesting we give them flack then, right? I know you're not suggesting that we should cut the officials some slack for reacting in the most odiously officious manner is logical because of the lack of negative response.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
it has happened. And just the cost of defending myself could bankrupt me.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
he got for the project?
For a motion detector it sure created a lot of motion.
Or did his project bomb?
Nope: you said it, you define it. "But it was someone else!!!" is no explanation when YOU are the one who called it crazy lookin. Especially in this case since the one you want the grandparent poster to go to never said that.
But I guess when you're shoving your head up your arse as hard as you can, you want to get people to look somewhere else when they ask you "why?".
The terrorists have already won.
That terrorists are already dominating our lives, our kids and our future.
It's what they are best in ... "TERROR" ... Look at this reaction and see people freightened in terror ..
And governments are "fixing" it by the most wrong means possible .. it's madness.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
How is this different than the idjots who called 911 and claimed their kid had been lofted above in a beautiful silver balloon? They are doing time. So should this jerk. Its public mischief.
Of course up here in Canada we try to laugh this stuff off.
Years ago we were in the news. One of our people took a handful of flour and tossed it on the bottom of a power pole. This is something we've been doing around the world for something like 60+ years. Its pretty innocent.
Along come the authorities. They test this "white powder". It test positive. Why? Because THEY contaminated their sample with the power pole. This hits the 12:00 news! Panic in the streets.
Was there an explanation given to the public - Nooooo. Not on your life.
I'm scared too. By birth I am an American Citizen born in Canada. But I'm now afraid to travel to the USA and I've counseled my kids on this issue. Don't take a lap top in. Don't take a CD or DVD in. Don't wear clothes.
There are something like 270 million people in the USA. If we assume 1% of them are paranoid in some way or otherwise limited in common sense and intelligence... then it seems these are the people who will be willing to be the low cost bidders! Are these the people manning the halls of government?
Up here in Canada here in Calgary I see car parts scattered on my street. Why? We get a big snow dump and we are told by our mayor that because of red tape they can't remove the snow which is now ice and the ruts are 1/2 way up to my knees in places. My tax dollars are spent in the creation of red tape. So I've been asking my neighbors - Does anyone want to run? I'll be the first to contribute to the campaign! I have not found one who wants the job.
It seems to go to the lowest bidder.
Sad and sadder indeed.
What? Another case of government-induced neurosis?
I'm sorry to say (and maibe becoming flame-bait) but the US governmend, along with UK and a couple more, have turned their citizens into neurotically-controlled persons afraid of anything that they believe to recognize as a "terrorist" threath.
An 11 years-old boy now? really?
What's next, 6 years-old's bicycle can be used to hide a "zero-point quantum device" from the future?
WAKE UP!
Although the way this was handled sounds incredibly stupid, I can guess what was going through the VP's mind: seven months ago, a student in another San Diego school successfully detonated five "bombs" that he made using Gatorade bottles.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/jun/06/1m6bottle00527-student-arrested-3-blasts-school/?metro&zIndex=111931
With that being fairly fresh in authorities' minds, I can easily imagine them worrying that the Millenial Tech student had developed a new and improved version. It still sounds like they overreacted, but at least I can understand why.
My sons Middle School is practically like that. They keep the kids from interacting wherever possible.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
... but will there be excuses ? And indemnities for the violation of privacies (the parents got their garage raided) ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The principal had a Powerade bottle in his hand and got jealous.
When I was about this kids age I made a trip wire motion detector with a copper pipe, buzzer, some batteries, toggle switch and a mercury switch purchased at my local Radio Shack. I tied a monofilament line to a tree and stuck this in the ground with the line tied to it. If another kid ran past my house and tripped it, it would go off. I forgot about it and it was found in the street by someones mom who called the police. The police went to her house and talked to her and her kid who knew it was mine. The kid ratted me out so I got a visit from the cop. He asked me if I made such a device and I told him what it was. He apologized to me and said to go pick it out of the street so the mother would calm down. I can't imagine what would happen today. Oh BTW I'm a mechanical engineer now.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
There was no substance inside the Gatorade bottle? And there are science and technology teachers in this school (or at least there are supposed to be) that could have taken a look at this and immediately figured it out? How many Gatorade bottles are opaque? Does this school principal even have any technology and science education?
I'm just sick of stupidity being attracted to our schools. We need to educate kids, not dumb them down to the level of school administrators. We need this especially so in science and technology. And we need to have the very best quality at our technology magnet schools.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
...for having an inept principal and the trauma of unnecessary police intervention. If something like that happened to me, I'd probably have a panic attack upon stepping on school grounds.
Given how 'cooperative' his parents were with the authorities, most likely. Pity, though, few have such enthusiasm so young.
If such a thing had happened to me, my parents would've been in school the next morning to demand a public apology from both the school and the vice-principal himself, as well as any required paperwork necessary to transfer me to another school.
I suspect the parents went along with the fire department as a simple five-minute "no, our kid isn't a terrorist; would you piss off now?" fix. Yeah, they could have made a big stink, but they probably don't want their kid's reputation muddied any further. (I can see the headlines now: "Bomb suspect's parents refuse safety inspection: is your neighbor building WMDs?")
Agreed on the apologies though. Not necessarily the transfer - once you've got school administration by the short and curlies, your child's academic options look a lot better...
Do you honestly think that if the authorities really believed a bomb was being put together there and the parents had refused the search, the police would have shown up a couple of hours later and gently knocked on the door to say "Excuse me, madam, I have a warrant to search this house for explosives, please allow me to execute it peacefully"?
No, of course not. I'd expect that some kind of SWAT team would be summoned the moment they refused the search in the first place. I'm not at all suggesting my proposed reaction would create anything less than a highly volatile and dangerous situation.
In fact, they'd probably simply be arrested on the spot. They would not be given any opportunity to contact their attorney, or even their child, to explain the situation. I'd guess that upon being arrested for something like "suspected support of a terrorist" that their house could then be legally searched despite their lack of cooperation. Perhaps then the "fuel for the mower" (noted in a sibling comment) would be used to justify the actions, to counter any potential claims of false arrest.
Again, it's rather easy (for any of us) to make such a decision as a thought experiment, when there aren't actually real police knocking on the real door, and a real innocent child isn't involved. But it would have been great to see the parents assert/defend their legal rights. I personally don't fear terrorists nearly as much as I fear that each time we don't stand up for our own rights, we risk their further erosion.
What if the real objective wasn't to make a motion detector it was to get out of school early? I really feel for the kid though. When I was in sixth grade my friend and I came up with an idea to make our own ruby laser. Fortunately we couldn't find a synthetic ruby rod and xenon flash tube. I say fortunately because our master plan was to destroy the school.
Mod me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I linked the source article and the slashdot article and told them they should be ashamed of themselves.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
What school policies could be violated by making a motion detector for a science fair?!
The one that says 'Don't make us adults look like complete morons'?
When I was in high school many many years ago, I got a copy of the Army "Improvised Field Munitions Handbook". Basically how to make bombs, weapons and other nasties from basic household or otherwise easy to find items. I made a few of the things, since as a typical male kid at the time, was fun and surprisingly educational at the time. Did a lot of other science experiments with chemicals purchased from the local chemical supply house, would probably have gotten me seriously investigated today. Now, any student sufficiently adept in the hard sciences (Chemistry, Physics, Biology) can be easily traumatized by stupid teachers that don't even fully understand the subject matter they are teaching, labelling them as potential bombers, weapons makers, or biological terrorists.
The truth is, we NEED students that understand this stuff, that can make this stuff, so that when they working on our side, can understand this stuff. If anything so that they can prevent stupid principals like that from raising false alarms. I mean, it's not like he was re-creating the experiment from "The Manhattan Project".
The terrorists have won, when we give up sanity and the right to use our brains out of ignorance and stupidity.
The terrorists have one.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
Well, almost. In middle school, back in 2000 for me, I had a simple electrolysis project with a nail, penny, battery and jar of vinegar. My teacher set it outside for the weekend because of the hydrogen and told the janitor what it was so he/she wouldn't remove it. Despite this the battery and wires caught the attention of one of the administrators and the authorities were called in. (at a significant expense I'm told) Fortunately for me they had the luxury of learning their lesson quietly over the weekend and while I never got my $3 worth of parts back I did learn some about our society.
They're only saying that he violated a policy, and recommending counseling for the kid and parents to spin their idiocy into something else. The guy at the school should be fired for giving an example to the kids of not taking responsibility for his own actions.
In the name of the father is a movie.
Watch it.
Brits do think 11 yos make bombs and they chucked them in prison
The vice principals reaction to this situation was completely irrational. I think this vice principal needs to take responsibility for his or her actions and should apologize to the kid, family, and everyone else involved with the school. He or she works at a school that promotes science and technology. It should be obvious that some students are going to be doing experiments and making things at home. It is completely natural for a student proud of something he or she did to want to share it with friends and possibly teachers. The vice principal should have asked the kid a few questions before coming to his irrational conclusion. By the sounds of it this kid would have been completely willing to explain what the device does and endure a call to his parents to clarify and complied with a request to leave such items made for personal purposes at home in the future. I'm sure the parents know that their child likes to make things and if they are good parents probably encourage it. Now on to a response to some of the comments I've seen on the original article. Some of you have done a really good job of making it seem like every school in America is filled with paranoid incompetent nut jobs as teachers, administrators and other staff, that American schools are filled with metal detectors, pat downs, random searches, officers with weapons, no child is allowed a shred of independent thought, children are forced to sit with their mouths closed and not move for hours on end, and so on. This is certainly not even close to the truth. There are some schools in the US that have indeed gone too far in the sprit of ‘security’ but those schools are a small minority. There are indeed some worrying trends in education and worrying reactions by parents, administrators, other school staff and teachers as evidenced by the original article and a few people’s personal stories such as the ‘could be used for growing pot’ one. Most of the teachers I had growing up were caring individuals who struck a good balance between teaching what was required of them and encouraging individual thought, critical thinking, and appropriate ways of dissenting. I’m speaking as an individual who has personally experienced a variety of school systems (including foreign ones) and am currently a teacher of preschoolers.
a 15yo builds a nuclear reactor in his basement and nobody stops him. But you bring a harmless bottle with some wires in it to school and they lock down the school for a day and force the kid to go to counselling?!
The terrorists have US citizens cowering in fear. They have already won.
So, let me get this straight... The administrator is an idiot for excercising (a bit much) caution when it comes to the safety of a school full of children... and you (and many above you) post libelous and fundamentally un-researched accusations about the person responsible for the safety of the children in question... then provide a link so the libeled admin can see the libelous messages you've all posted? Bright... you must be victims of the conspiracy being illustrated above pertaining to kids growing up not being able to learn anything.
That stated for the record, I fundamentally agree that the educational *system* no longer cares about educating children, only about justifying the continued funding which keeps getting cut back. The standardized testing in place to report academic progress of a "body of students" determines how much funding the school gets from the government. Without the funding, the school cannot operate and has to close its doors. The schools are governmentally mandated through this process to teach students to pass the tests, not to love learning, not to be curious, not to explore the world (individual teachers do that, the actual educational foot soldiers as it were, not the generals).
As few years ago as the 80s, we were still pranking our classmates by spreading NI3 around the room (mild contact explosive which snapped if percussed even slightly)... and the teacher was showing us how. I could buy most chemicals necessary to make just about anything at the local hobby store in the chemistry section. The nation was great and the next generation was being trained to be thinkers and keep us moving forward on the front end of technology. The 70s had been a time of democratizing science... now, the geeks are unfriendly and unwelcoming (read the comments above) as the internet has allowed them to stay sheltered and not necessitated learning to use interpersonal communication skills or tact.
More time teaching ethics to the youth may allow us to undo some of the damage done, allowing more time to let children explore the world. Unfortunately, until the goverment allows education to educate, the US will eventually realize Mike Judges vision of the future in _Idiocracy_ - sad, sad days.
You people don't know what the truth is! It's there, just under their bullshit, but you never look! That's what I hate most about this fucking city -- lies are news and the truth is obsolete!
Spider Jerusalem
Of course it may have been another parent that insisted on the search!
Sherlock Holmes
I'm sure you're getting a lot of these right now from other Slashdotters. But this is in a slightly different tone.
I would like to show you my sincerest gratitude. This is what people need to see. The more incidents like this, the better.
Every time I meet a parent of a particularly bright child in the public school system, I tell them about how their schools are failing the student. I'm collecting a growing body of evidence to support my claim, as my own story is purely anecdotal and questionable because of that. This is one of the best stories I've yet come across.
Our public school system is designed for the mediocre. Bright students are discouraged and not challenged enough while the poor students aren't given the attention they need. For the average student, this system of education is sufficient and will prepare them for the place in the workforce that's suitable for them. People are led to believe that magnet schools are the solution, but magnet schools are staffed with the same caliber of educators that other public schools are. Even the knowledgeable, above average teachers are stifled by reactionary administration and the growing prison-like atmosphere of schools designed to leave the teaching of critical thinking skills mostly to the students, their caretakers, universities, and extracurricular, outside groups.
While public schools will continue to regularly give examples of this, there are few so extreme as to get media attention. This is why I must applaud your actions. I do regret the trauma given to the boy and his family, but hopefully they will eventually realize their importance in the education about education that the general populace needs.
I will continue to watch for stories about your school. I am certain that you will continue to provide the evidence I need.
I thank you again.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
Well ya know they could leave it alone... I know trinary situations often look like binary situations, but we all too often ignore that a deviation from the status quo is not necessary, and since loose and tighten are both verbs, what have we got to lose?
2^3 * 31 * 647
is that, even after finding out that the kid's project was harmless, they went to his house and inspected his garage. There was no rational suspicion of wrongdoing, no evidence to justify further investigation. I can only assume that this was the "We always have to be absolutely sure" excuse used far too often to go where they don't have a real right to.
Thanks for the link. I sent them this letter. Maybe not the most eloquent ever written, but something must be better than nothing.
Hi,
I read recently in the San Diego Union Tribune about the lock down and evacuation of Millennial Tech Middle School over the motion detection science project brought in by one of the students. I am deeply concerned about these events. We should be encouraging this type of self-motivated learning in our children, not stifling it with fear mongering.
A simple interview with the student in question should have been enough to diffuse the situation before such extreme measures even needed to be considered. The lack of such a rapport with the students speaks volumes about the character of the vice principle who's first reaction was to call police.
In addition to these unfortunate events, the school seems to be unapologetic towards the student in concern, even suggesting that he had violated a school policy. Please indicate to me which section of the school policy the student has violated? Below is the link to the school policy.
http://www.mtechmiddle.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=58810&type=d&termREC_ID=&pREC_ID=87933&hideMenu=1&rn=8708720
At the very least the school owes a public apology to this student, his family, and the other families affected by this unfortunate incident.
Please take a moment to reflect on the wider impacts of such reactions on our society in general. What sort of brilliant minds are we stifling with this sort of behavior?
Sincerely,
A very concerned citizen
From the article: Both the student and his parents were "very cooperative" with authorities, Luque said. He said fire officials also went to the student's home and checked the garage to make sure items there were neither harmful nor explosive. "There was nothing hazardous at the house," Luque said. The student will not be prosecuted, but authorities were recommending that he and his parents get counseling, the spokesman said. The student violated school policies, but there was no criminal intent, Luque said. "There will be no (criminal) charges whatsoever," Luque said. Police and fire officials also will not seek to recover costs associated with responding to the incident, the spokesman said. Luque said both the student and his parents were extremely upset. "He was very shaken by the whole situation, as were his parents," Luque said. from some other article: Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
When I was in high-school (22 years ago) there was a "rifle squad" as one of the cheerleading sections. (in addition to the Cheerleaders, the "Twirlers" (Majorettes?), and the Pom-pom squad) These were mostly wood but they didn't look like broomsticks. They looked like rifles with all-white stocks. They were accurately weighted too.
Given the way the girls handled them, they probably could have used them like a quarterstaff in case of attack. So I suppose they could accuratly be considered weapons.
His sig has to be one of the best I have seen. I have almost been caught by it on several occasions, but in each case I realized it was meant to be humor just before I clicked Reply.
McFly777
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"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman