The Stupidity of People

I am mad this morning.  I am soooo mad.  I spend an unbelievable amount of my time and resources with children who have no outlet at schools that don't understand kids interested in engineering and read this article about a child who loves robotics and tinkering and was in the robotics club in middle school and becomes a freshman in high school where there is less opportunity to do this kind of stuff.  So he is looking for his 'tribe' of people and builds a clock out of electronic parts (by the way, a project that is on the front pages of maker magazines constantly, educational websites, and tons of kits in stores) and takes it to high school and shows his engineering teacher who tells him to put it away and then the police come and arrest the kid -- BECAUSE HE IS MUSLIM (just read what the police say).  I am sorry - he looks like a 'nerd' to me - not a terrorist.  Common sense people.  Common sense.   When you read it - the kid did NOTHING out of the ordinary where you could even read the reasons for doubt in the teacher's minds.  No threats, jokes, nothing.  This is a common occurrence and bigotry at work.

He has been suspended from school and is in juvenile detention and has never said anything other than - 'it is a clock I built'.  He was paraded out of school in handcuffs in front of the student body.  That could have been my child who takes his 3-D printed widgets to school daily to show friends and discuss what he made the night before (my child is also brown eyed, dark haired and light brown skinned).  This is exactly how I counseled my child to meet like-minded kids to make friends last year when he started attending a school where he knew no-one.  'Go to the robot meeting and see who is there from your classes, bring some widgets and show them around, you'll find some kids who are interested and make friends!'.

The last line of the article is heartbreaking - "he has vowed never to take an invention to school again".  But worse is that this legal nightmare is not over for him and his family - he still hasn't been allowed back to school.

Uneducated Bigots.  This is why this EVIL diatribe around immigration and non-white skinned people is WRONG and people need to stop promoting it and watching it and staying silent.  When a bright kid can't invent in his hometown and put together educational materials because his skin isn't white - our country will NEVER BE GREAT AGAIN.

This child - properly encouraged - could have been the one to develop low cost electric cars, a way to

 Why has our country become this??  Where the image
 of the nerd wearing a NASA shirt is a terrorist and
 those (yes, same state) on the right are not and ok.  

protect against concussions, a new cure for a disease - now he knows that being smart and innovative is a straight shot to the jail cell as well as the hundreds of other kids in that high school that witnessed this happening.   Better to put your head down and play video games instead of tinker with your hands and understand how things work.   Is this the society we want?

This brings me back to our high priced private school where teachers would get glassy eyed when David would tell them about his robots and his meetings with patent attorneys and the conference he was going to in Austria.  They would pat him on the head verbally and mumble things about how it was great he liked to play with LEGOs  They were sooooo technically illiterate at the most basic level that they couldn't even begin to comprehend what he was doing and so swept it aside as toys.  But I guess better than call the cops on him!  He felt so ignored and small there.  Imagine how this child feels!?

Just a few of the electronic clock kits on MakerShed this week.
From Amhed's description of his device - it looked like one
of these with a digital display.  Not the large board in his picture.
When I go to the local electronics store - there must be a dozen
such kits for kids there! 

As I write this, my robot team member that just moved to Germany for the year has been texting me from there (after school I presume now).  He is chomping on the bit to get our telepresence robot up and running so he can Skype in and work in my basement remotely and is asking me questions (it is 8 am here - on a Wednesday).  That is the power of ENCOURAGEMENT instead of punitive actions.  He could be playing video games and sulking over being overseas away from his friends but instead he is taking creative positive steps to keep engaged in activities this child was trying to do.

Read Twitter today.  #IStandWithAhmed.  Amazing the
luminaries who are coming out in support of this kid.  And
what a totally dumb spokesperson.  "A clock tells time, I wanted
build one.  End of story".  And by the way dimwits, a clock has to be
connected to a fuse and explosives.  DUH.

The best way to make a radical -- exclude them from mainstream society and sideline them for no reason.  Way to go.

My next step is to help some of my engineering friends track this kid down and let him know that the
greater community thinks he is special.  We should all send a note to his school and police department telling them how wrong they are.

Tricia