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9th-Grader May Face Charges After Homemade Clock Mistaken For Bomb
New submitter bengoerz writes: 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was led away from MacArthur High School in handcuffs and faces possible charges after teachers, school administrators, and police in Irving, Texas mistook his homemade clock for a bomb. The device — a circuit board, power supply, and digital display wired together inside a pencil box — was confiscated by a teacher after the alarm sounded in class. Despite telling everyone who would listen that his device was just a clock, Ahmed was confronted by four police officers, suspended for three days, and threatened with expulsion unless he made a written statement, before eventually being transported to a juvenile detention center to meet his parents.
Oh yeah, because of 9-11 and Boston and other attempts we are now called stupid because we're a little jump over people with Arab names building things and hiding them inside a box and bringing it to school. Really? What the kid did was stupid, sadly but still stupid. It was cool what he did and I love hobby electronics mainly because I grew up during the heathkit years and my dad still has a heathkit TV in his basement collecting dust. The boy and his parents should have cleared it with the school first. In this day and age where suicide bombers simply don't care about human life, you have to watch out for everyone. Even an innocent kid with a cool home made clock in a box.
Think about it
Government run education simply doesn't need to be any good - the government has a monopoly. They take your tax dollars by force and then require you to attend school.
Sure, you can enroll in any number of private schools, but you will still pay for government run schools.
The only way out of this that ensures even poor kids get an education is charters and vouchers. No unions, no teachers riding tenure all the way to their pension days. Government (aka taxpayers) still pay for every kid to get an education - and the schools need to compete for enrollment.
Create a Government monopoly in anything and you will get a bunch of people who will do just enough work to not get fired.
Well, according to every MRA member who has ever defended why there are more men in STEM fields, it's because boy's are more interested in them.
Weird how that gets tossed out the window in the hysteria over women dominating other fields, isn't it.
But don't worry! Men may be a minority in biological sciences, yet they still manage to dominate the field.