7 Kids Not Named Mohamed Who Brought Homemade Clocks to School And Didn't Get Arrested

[Hissyspit]

http://gawker.com/7-kids-not-named-mohamed-who-brought-homemade-clocks-to-1730999866

7 Kids Not Named Mohamed Who Brought Homemade Clocks to School And Didn't Get Arrested

Andy Cush
Filed to: AHMED MOHAMED
9/16/15 12:10pm

Hoping to impress the teachers at his new school, an Irving, Texas, high school freshman named Ahmed Mohamed brought a homemade clock with him to MacArthur High Monday morning, which he’d assembled before bed the night before. When he showed it to those teachers, though, they were something other than impressed, and by Monday afternoon, Mohamed was being led out of school in handcuffs. Ahmed’s English teacher believed the device was a bomb.

Why? Could it have something to do with Ahmed Mohamed’s name, or the color of his skin? His father thinks so. “He just wants to invent good things for mankind,” Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed told the Dallas Morning News. “But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated.”

Mohamed’s father might be right. Below are seven students, not named Mohamed, who got off scot-free for the heinous crime of DIY timekeeping, plus a bonus kid who brought an actual inert bomb to school and wasn’t suspended. (Mohamed got three days.)

Peter Mathis of Wilmington, North Carolina

REST OF LIST AT LINK

[seaotter]

1. We made these in Jr. High woodshop. 1974

[enough]

3. Those were the days! (nt)

[Egnever]

4. How times have changed

Some things have certainly changed for the better but more and more I am concerned by all of the decisions seemingly made based on fear.

[malthaussen]

5. Hell, I brought a pistol to school in '72.

Loaded with blanks, I was going to use it in the school play. One of my classmates ratted me out to the principal, but all he did was take possession of it until the play began.

Try that now, and I'd be in jail.

-- Mal

[snort]

14. I brought an SKS to show and tell, fresh from Viet Nam.

Complete with stained bayonet. Those were some excited classmates! '69 it were. No shit. WTF then or now by the way.

[malaise]

2. Thanks for this Hissyspit

Racism and bias are destroying America.

[Human101948]

18. America has always been a dysfunctional nation...

Slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese internment, No Irish Need Apply, the Jewish Banking Conspiracy, the only good injun is a dead injun.

Racism and xenophobia have been a hallmark of this nation from day one.

[Demeter]

19. And English teachers should stick to their principals and predicates

because they sure as shooting don't know a thing about mechanical devices, let alone bombs.

Oh, I'm sorry, they don't even do grammar anymore....guess they just provide in-house Homeland Security...

[Human101948]

20. Demeter, be generous...it was a circuit board...

God knows what Muslim mischief could be concealed in those little do-hingeys!

[Demeter]

21. Nothing is concealed in a circuit board...it's all hanging right out there

BSEE 1976 LTI

[Human101948]

22. He could have packed C4 in those little transistor thingeys...

Very sneaky those Muslims!

[kentauros]

23. Yeah, but he could have had homemade plutonium in those cans!!!1!

"Cans" = capacitors

What little I remember from electronics drafting class...

[erpowers]

6. Another Big Difference

There is another big difference between Ahmed Mohamed and the other kids listed in the article. The other kids were bringing their clocks to school as part of school projects. In the case of the last kid part of the reason he was not suspended or arrested was that the teacher encouraged him to bring the item to school. Maybe if the other kids had brought their clocks to school in an attempt to impress their teachers they might also have been suspended and/or arrested.

[yardwork]

12. God forbid that any school child show initiative or intellectual curiosity.

When I was growing up, doing extra work was considered a Good Thing and likely way to get into a good college. "Attempts to impress the teacher" were also encouraged, as a way to obtain encouragement, maybe even mentoring toward future success.

I don't know when it became fashionable in the U.S. to praise ignorance and laziness (see people who voted for W because he was a C student, just regular folks, not one of those liberal intulechshulls.)

[KG]

15. cool story, bro

[gollygee]

25. Yeah, totally reasonable that a kid should be arrested for showing initiative

[TubbersUK]

26. Ah, I see now. He brought his clock in on a non-clock day

No wonder he got arrested

[erpowers]

29. Had No Reason To Bring It To School

My point was that he had no reason for bringing the clock to school. The other kids a reason to bring their clocks and devices to school. I think it is reasonable for an English teacher to be worried when a kid bring a countdown clock, that they thought might be a bomb, to school for no reason. I think if the kid had had a reason to bring the clock to school things might have gone in a different direction.

[yuiyoshida]

7. K&R

tweeted!!!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. Texas? Makes sense.

[Javaman]

10. +1 nt

[mountain grammy]

9. I don't know,

that Cesar Limas kid doesn't sound too 'murican to me.

[skippercollector]

11. ernie's folly

"Ernie's Folly," about his science project to build a clock, is my favorite episode of My Three Sons. It originally aired in 1967.
http://www.tv.com/shows/my-three-sons/ernies-folly-39619/

[bonniebgood]

13. this child's beautiful mind and creativity is damaged for life. NT

[dembotoz]

16. kid made a decorative wall clock in wood shop...hangs on the wall

xmas present to his mom

[ut oh]

17. That is terrible

The paranoia (and racism) runs strong in Texas....

[L. Coyote]

27. The Stupid is the largest river in Texas

[Rex]

24. No no...I have been informed here by a fellow DUer that the school did the right thing.

[steve2470]

28. .........