What you do you think about the story of the boy who took a home-made clock to school and was arrested?
By John Welford
@indexer (4852)
Leicester, England
September 17, 2015 2:40am CST
We read today about a 14-year-old boy in Texas, named Ahmed Mohammed, who wanted to impress his science teacher at his new school so he took along a electronic clock he had built for himself at home. However, another teacher saw the clock, immediately thought "hoax bomb" and carted Ahmed off to the school principal who promptly called the Police who took him away in handcuffs.
The mistake was soon rectified, but the damage has been done in terms of Ahmed's confidence, and that of any other schoolkid in America who will now be worried about whether their efforts to impress will be misconstrued
The question that I worry about is - would the reaction have been different if Ahmed had not had the name he did and clearly been of Arab extraction?
2 people like this
4 responses
@cahaya1983 (11116)
• Malaysia
17 Sep 15
It's ridiculous. And honestly, yes I think the reaction would be different if he's of a different background. The article below kinds of put things into perspective. 
I heard Mark Zuckerberg acknowledging him on his Facebook wall though, and he got an invitation to the White House too.
I heard Mark Zuckerberg acknowledging him on his Facebook wall though, and he got an invitation to the White House too.
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 te
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@cahaya1983 (11116)
• Malaysia
17 Sep 15
@indexer Not quite like his, but one student practically made an inert bomb using fertilizer and diesel in a test tube, got his project approved by his science teacher and neither of them were arrested, handcuffed or fingerprinted by the authorities.
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@kevinakash (2084)
• Sri Lanka
29 Sep 15
Shall I take this conversation to different phase.That is all the clock and watches are changing in their look.Because for all these changes, it took less than a century.However Evolution of watches and clocks symbolizes something interesting. That is, how the inner mental feelings of human beings change over time.
@ashuli (1196)
• India
17 Sep 15
Well, yes I too think so... that if he had some other name which dint seem to be of Arab community, the teacher would not have reacted this way.
But what happened was wrong on the teachers part, he/she is supposed to treat every student equally, without thinking what a students name is. What the teacher assumed just because of the name was in no way right, should have first checked before handing over the student to the police...
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