Wow......a kid taking apart a clock....mounting it in a small pencil box. WOW....sounds like someone who trying to learn how thing work. Ask many "inventors" and engineers how they got their start. Do the same damn things..... Don't defend the bigotry by the school and police.
Re the alarm going off in the middle of class, that doesn't seem at all weird to me. As he's putting the clock together, he may have just been randomly twiddling with the buttons to test functionality, and he forgot that the alarm was set. Also: new school, new set of teachers. Maybe he tries to share his after-school hobby just to make an impression with a teacher. If he had some behavioral problems in the past, I would be more willing to believe the intentional hoax bomb theory. That's a pretty extreme thing for a student to try.
Not if their folks put them up to it. To me it just doesn't make sense why he'd do it in the first place if it was totally innocent. There's nothing at all impressive about taking a clock out of its case and putting it in a box. If he's 5 or 6 and does it, great, but this was a high school kid.
I have to say. It's interesting that some who tend to stick to the most simple narrative and only "the facts" are somehow trying to come up with the most complicated scenario for this. Seems inconsistent to me.
Typical. Let's attack the kid and the family. Alarming that folks rather faux security over liberty. Commodore, the more I see your post, the more I think you are a faux or misguided libertarian.
So, people who are not capable of doing anything more complicated than ripping out parts of a clock and put it inside a pencil box are somehow capable of planning a convoluted scheme to make Irving ISD and Irving PD look bad? If you are going to go through with this scheme, maybe somebody would actually "make" a clock? Cuz you know this device is gonna get taken apart and looked into, no? And as I said, even if the student or the family intended to provoke a response from the school/police, it was still up to the school and police to overreact and made themselves look bad. A more measured response (like, maybe there is no need to actually handcuff him?) would have avoided a lot of the negative PR that they got.
It wasn't a complex or convoluted plan, it was simply rip the guts out of an alarm clock and put them in a pencil box with an alarm set to go off in the middle of class....voila, the school reacts just as they would to anyone in the same scenario and you have a national story due to the assumption of racism.
It wasn't particularly impressive, true, but he himself said as much. BTW, one of the other students at the school talks about him in the video here: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...k-ahmed-mohamed-texas-officials-we-were-right "He built a radio out of cardboard, fixed a teacher's projector, he built a camera out of cardboard, he fixed my tablet, I mean he's a real smart kid." I know its just the words of another student, but it does indicate that its his real hobby, and he evidently has some skill in it, even if this digital clock box he put together doesn't really show it.
Fair enough, that's the kind of context that can sway my opinion. If it wasn't a cynical act to stir up controversy then that's good, but schools are always going to react this way towards things of that nature so hopefully a lesson was learned. I've had personal experience with that sort of thing, having innocuous words or actions nearly lead to cuffs when I was in high school.
From that article: I thought he built it to impress the science teacher. Now he was indeed targeting the English teacher with it? Yeah, the father is not trying to milk this at all by blowing it out of proportion. As to Carl Herrera's point that the authorities had to act really stupid and out of proportion themselves to allow the family to take advantage of the situation in the way they are doing - yes, agreed. But they sure seem to be enjoying the attention. Also, durvasa, "He built a radio out of cardboard, fixed a teacher's projector, he built a camera out of cardboard, he fixed my tablet, I mean he's a real smart kid." - where in the article are these words of another student? I cannot find them on that page.
^Of course the father is saying stuff like that. That's how every common person here thinks they should talk when they've been in any way victimized. That's the standard "I'm building up my legal case" lingo that most every American has nowadays. And he has every right to take up legal action for how his son was treated. I'm not saying it'll amount to anything, but why wouldn't he try? Anyway that quote is like when people cite "heavy and insurmountable emotional stress." It's usually a gross overexaggeration, but someone who says that is more likely to be taken seriously than someone who is like "I mean it was pretty bad but not anything that'll scar me for life." That's just a product of the culture we live in more than some conspiracy.
If they were so worried about safety and the teacher really thought it was a bomb - why wasn't the bomb squad brought in and the school evacuated? Maybe because they knew it wasn't a bomb and were never really that worried.
The kid's father would have loved it if they had been even more stupid and had done that, you can be sure about that. So if it was planned from the beginning, then maybe they are disappointed that that part of the plan didn't actually work out. Again, certain groups make it part of their strategy to constantly self-victimize. "We don't get to build a mosque on Ground Zero." "We are being denied the right to make our women wear mobile jails in France." "I am founding a TV station to counter Islamist stereotypes, then I will go and behead my wife" Pallywood. Etc. For certain "activists", you should not underestimate the amount of effort and planning that goes into their actions to try and gain PR points.
It was planned? And you substantiate that accusation with what? That Muslims are guilty until proven innocent?
You substantiate that accusation against the police with what? That the police is guilty of racism until proven innocent?
What exactly is not the plausible? 14 y.o kid tries to impress with his nerdiness. We all know how desperate teenage boys are to impress. Probably also had some crush on his English teacher since she was the primary target here. Am I the only one who remembers how teenage boys are? He put something together fast, half assing it. Well ..it's a 14 y.o boy not an engineer!! But oh no, let's put some sinister conspiracy plot on the kids and his parents. Noone could predict this reaction from the school because you know.. a sane person would expect that a) teachers would have the least mental capabillity and common sense to realise that a bomb needs explosives. b) even if a teacher was an idiot, the "expert" in this case the sciense teacher who SUPPOSEDLY should at least recognise that circuits don't equal explosive devices would be seeked for advice by the principal So not only they put together a sinister plot but they also predicted the total idiocity of multiple parties here (teachers, principal even police who treated him like a criminal ). BTW I hope that the kid's suspension has stopped.
