If School Officials Got Confused By Kid's Science Project, Why Does The Kid Need Counseling?
from the shouldn't-it-go-the-other-way? dept
Slashdot points us to the story of an 11-year-old student who tried to build his own motion-detector system as a science project, and when he brought it to school to show people, school officials thought it was a bomb and freaked out. They called the police, evacuated the school and all of the expected chaos followed. Law enforcement even brought in a robot to examine the device, and the student's house was searched for explosives (none found, of course). After all of this (and it was said that the student and his parents were "very cooperative" throughout the ordeal) you might think the family deserves an apology. Instead:The student will not be prosecuted, but authorities were recommending that he and his parents get counseling, the spokesman said. The student violated school policies, but there was no criminal intent....I'm trying to figure out what "policies" could have been violated, and why it would require that he and his parents get counseling. It wasn't the kid who did anything wrong. It was the school officials who freaked out. Perhaps they should be the ones to seek counseling?
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Filed Under: education, science project, students
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I'm a particular fan of schools and businesses zero tolerance on being intollerant....
Did I...yeah, I just blew your mind....
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So it begins
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Re: So it begins
I like the sound of that!
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Re: So it begins
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Re: So it begins
i think i am going to start using this phrase along with 'wussification' to describe whats happening to our nations children.
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But lets look at the situation.
Kid does something smart
School freaks out
School blames kid for freaking out
School cites 'broken policies' as the reason
The only way I can see it is either the school has a ban on wires and 'electronics' or it's against school policy to be smart.
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Oh please, I bet you at least one of the parents was like an electrical engineer. The kid had little clue how to make it without the help of the parents. Since it's the kid who should be making the project, I might give the student a bad grade just because it's clear that the parents made it and not the kid. Or else I might independently ask the kids a bunch of questions about motion detectors and see if the kid can answer without the help of his parents.
Oh wait, most teachers at his grade level won't know enough about motion detectors to know what to ask.
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(http://www.mtechmiddle.org/?rn=7539728)
So it looks like the teachers would know what to ask.
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...
So it looks like the teachers would know what to ask.
Um, you don't seem to be familiar with what passes for a "technology teacher" these days.
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teacher: Does your motion detector involve explosives?
Student: No.
Teacher: So your project will not explode upon detecting motion
Student: No
Teacher: Ok, you get an A.
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> was like an electrical engineer. The kid had
> little clue how to make it without the help of
> the parents.
Nothing like coming to a dead certain conclusion with absolutely no evidence to back it up.
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Remember, just because your VCR lets you know that it's always 12:00 somewhere doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of us are pretentious 'tards...
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I would say a policy against electronics at a technology-based magnet school would be absurd, but "absurd" seems to be the rule of the day here...
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Where is this?
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Re: Where is this?
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Re: Re: Re: Where is this?
if the state exists by the authority and agreement of the counties, then it could be a federation. if the counties exist at the dictate of the state, then it is unitary, i believe.
then there's Feudalism, which can be kinda both and neither...
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Compare and Contrast
This is a Kid with a bottle of Gatorade.
This is a Mad Bomber.
Can you tell the difference?
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Re: Compare and Contrast
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Congratulations, you're qualified to be a school administrator!
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Oh GEEZ.
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More like, "Do not provide school officials with the opportunity to demonstrate that they are, in fact, morons."
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The vice principal should be responsible for paying the police and fire officials, as well as paying the child's parents for time and even mileage. But what the hell was the VP thinking? You see a young student showing other students a suspicious device and you go run to call 911? Any moron can look at an empty coke bottle with wires and quickly determine that it's not an explosive. If it were my kid, I would have that principal by the balls and I would give him valid reason to call the police. What a joke.
"A MAST robot took pictures of the device and X-rays were evaluated. About 3 p.m., the device was determined to be harmless, Luque said."
This whole thing reminds me of that Baby Ruth in the pool incident in Caddyshack. Lets drain the pool and send in hazmat to determine what that floater is....ridiculous.
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Yeah, the thing this has in common with Boston's Mooninites freak-out is that someone should have realized that a bomb requires something to actually be doing the explody. You can cram as many Lite-Brites and Gatorade bottles together as you want, and it doesn't matter how many wires and circuit boards you wrap it with, it ain't going to go Boom.
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Mooninites
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Police State 101
We live in a police state, the sooner we realize that the better.
It's not cynical I'm just tired of the blind leading the blind.
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http://www.sandi.net/20451098155234193/site/default.asp?
Millenial Tech Middle School "Contact us"
http://www.mtechmiddle.org/apps/contact/
Email away everyone. Email away.
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(sigh)
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Re: (sigh)
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Apparently it was an "emotion detector", and the kid requires school mandated counseling to get over his justifiable "terrorist" vitriol against administrative stupidity.
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Re: Re: (sigh)
Simple truth is that yes, might not be a leftist that over-reacted, but most educators at least at university level are liberals and conservatives are not well recieved there.
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That makes lots of of sense....to an idiot or a Liberal Democrat. Ok, sorry for being redundant.
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your entire political spectrum is on the 'right' anyway, and all equally useless (much like almost everyone else's, that part), so why argue about it?
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What the hell does "leftist" have to do with this?
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If you look at San Diego, they actually lean further right wing than left. Most of their State and National reps are Republican.
Unfortunately, Terrorism fear is the responsiblilty of right-wing hacks trying to scare their way into office, and the blind media promoting fear in order to boost ratings.
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Pranks
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(sigh)
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how just typical retarded-ist knee-jerk over reaction.
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wow
I can't imagine what would happen if I were a student today and pulled into the parking lot with what looked like a cannon in my pickup truck.
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Re: wow
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Re: wow
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Policies
Great message - don't build anything remotely cool and bring it to school.
Next thing will be that the school will realize that the kid came up with some new technology for motion detection and they will want to own the rights to it because it was a science project.
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Because of the school's reaction
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Re: Because of the school's reaction
While one can understand why a school official might have raised eyebrows when first confronted with an unknown device, I wonder if anyone ever asked the boy what it was before launching into "full lockdown mode"? It is one thing to err on the side of caution, and quite another thing to throw reason out the window.
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What about the kid?
Being punished for being clever (and being left with the feeling that what he did was wrong) is not a good way to start.
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Yeah School officials need counseling
The family deserves an apology and the school official who flipped out should undergo stress management counseling and a 101 on technology course.
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"Look kid, there are a lot of dumb people out there, and your teachers and principals are no exception. They have been trained by Hollywood movies as to what a bomb looks like, and have probably never seen or heard of an electronic project kit. So, in the future, house your project in project box so that no one can see the wires or batteries."
The terrorists win again by making everyone unreasonably vigilante, resulting in possibly fewer kids experimenting with electronic kits, making us a less technically literate society, causing innovations to occur elsewhere.
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children are too much liability
i don't see why we should continue this nonsense. children ruin everything, why not just ban them instead of letting the government ruin our lives to protect them?
it has to be cheaper to just institute a national curfew that forbids people under the age of 21 from leaving their homes physically or electronically. perhaps a hunting season where it is legal to shoot children for sport would be incentive to keep children out of sight without taxing law enforcement unnecessarily.
just like guns or animals, children are dangerous items that need to be should be registered, tracked, and kept under lock and key.
once public spaces are free from the threat of children, perhaps a little sanity will return to our government and society can return to normal operation.
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Re: children are too much liability
The Problem with Young People Today is...
;)
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Actually I agree that the whole family is in need of counseling. The have just been vigorously mindfucked and should be treated for stress.
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So Cowardly Coward, why don't you call yourself and tell us what you found out, don't just post flamebait ;)
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Actually, I'm not all that interested in this story. I'm more interested in Mike's motivation in posting this. The story is all over the place and now it's here too. Mike / Techdirt has enough credibility and influence that people might talk to him. Add something to the story and I'll be impressed. Shouting "yeah! what's up with that?" isn't so interesting.
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Between the lines
I can almost here the ultimatum offered by the school officials at the end of this.
Admit this was all you and your child's fault, don't contradict any of this at a later date and we won't file a bunch of bogus charges, make you pay for police and fire response and expel your child for reasons that will keep him out of anything but a school for violent offenders.
Oh, the student handbook for the school can be found here:
http://old.sandi.net/mtm/policies.html
Maybe some of you can figure what policy he broke...
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Re: Between the lines
Other than the name of the police spokesman and one police officer, there weren't any names mentioned.
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Re: Between the lines
> didn't ask a few probing questions, like what
> school policy the student broke.
I've noticed this trend in journalism across the board. Most news stories these days leave me wanting for basic facts. The news media seems to focus more on feelings and emotions than factual information.
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In defense of the school...
Keep in mind people that with everything that has happened since 9/11 and the shoe and underwear bomb attempts, everyone is on their toes when they see something out of the ordinary.
Let me ask you this: if *you* were vp of a school (technical or not, doesn't matter) and you see a kid with a device inside a bottle with electronics and wires, wouldn't that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand and raise all kinds of alarms in your head? I don't agree with their response to counseling, but you have to give the vp at least a little credit for properly responding. What if it *was* a real bomb? The VP was in his place to make that call, he would not have been doing his job otherwise.
You can't possibly expect someone to walk into a public place with a circuit board and wires exposed to open air and not have someone yell 'terrorist'. It's just not possible nowadays, thank the gov't and terrorists for that. They created the perfect amount of paranoia in our country for incidents like this to be blown way out of proportion.
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Re: In defense of the school...
The part that completely blows my mind is the fact that a principal thought that the kid would bring a bomb to school. Are you serious? How paranoid and demented do you have to be if the first thought that came to this DB's mind was "it's a bomb!".
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I will give them the benefit out the doublt...
I don't see how after talking to the student about his project they came to the conclusion that they should call in the bomb squad.
It would be cool to see a picture of his project too, and what his final grade on it was.
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Re: I will give them the benefit out the doublt...
I bet the kid got an A, turns out it wasn't a motion detector, but in fact an idiot detector. Worked with flying colors.
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I am just saying...
(Little Brother by Cory Doctorow)
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Looks like the kid actually invented...
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ok ill put a real pipe bomb schematic on my website
yea see we need more stupid people right at least this way we can get rid a the frak tards in society by having them blow themselves up
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Because public officials are never wrong.
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Government in control
I am curious as to how "zero tolerance" can even be applied to this case. The kid did his assignment, a completely clueless moron freaked out over his own ignorance (why is that guy in charge?), and then when the spotlight shows his own stupidity, he blames the kid for his obvious mistake. What was the school not tolerating? Homework? I believe the "zero tolerance" should apply to the VP for scaring a population of students and parents for no reason whatsoever. Throw the moron out. Such a person should never be involved in education.
Rant over, but perhaps all school staff should have a familiarity what classes are being taught and that all electronic circuits aren't bombs. Bombs usually involve an explosive.
What does this kid learn? Label his science projects with a big bold sign saying "MOTION DETECTOR".
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The terrorist
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motion-detector incident
The original article states "After talking to the student, it was decided about 1 p.m. to evacuate the school as a precaution while the item was examined." - I wonder what was said during that discussion ..... ?
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Re: motion-detector incident
Student: Uh... I don't think so.
Official: Bomb alert! We need to evacuate!
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Curiosity didn't kill the cat. Curiosity was killed by fear. They'll get my soldering gun when they pry it out of my cold dead hands.
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the race the americans won to the moon
funny last i checked the rockets that got to the moon were made entirely in america by americans. YES they were new immigrants some like the project leader but hey THEY WERE AMERICAN
even my dad was smart enough to immigrate out of the usa to canada
every american i dealt with has soo much money they just buy the intelligence and worry about getting scammed latr
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I can hard imagine what would happen in this day and age.
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ultimate test
that's all I have.
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Many of you have this story wrong - sorry
I respect the officials for this recommendation.
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Speaking of which - why do we never hear about how politicians and other government officials need 'counseling'.
Would just the concept and overwhelming desire to stay in a position of power so long be considered 'mental instability'?
Seems to me, it's "Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder" or some variation of such.
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Those "Educators" are a joke
Simply put those school officials are morons and now have the tenacity to tell the parents of the students under their charge that they know whats best for their kids. And to the parents of that kid.. "PRIVATE SCHOOL ASAP"
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These morons do serve a valid purpose, however - it teaches us to get our children OUT OF THERE. Private schools don't play these stupid games where families, values, and teaching come last.
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