I was going to include in the post that spawned this Comment of the Day many of the similarly shocking examples of school abuse of innocent students because their teachers and school administrators were paranoid, insensitive, mentally-challenged dolts that somehow didn’t bother the Presdient of the United States sufficiently to utter a peep of protest. I decided instead to concentrate on an example not of school related abuse, but as in the Ahmed Mohamed case, the criminalization of teens acting like teens while living in a society that has been fear-mongered into derangement.
I am grateful that long time commenter here Michael R took up the challenge and provided links to the some of the examples I left out. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, Ahmed Mohamed, Justin Carter, And White House Priorities:
I see the news media falling over themselves trying to find when white students did the same thing and rewarded.
How about when they weren’t? My favorite one is when a principal called the bomb squad for a science fair project because he said it was a ‘realistic’ atomic bomb. It was a poster board poster. It wasn’t even a 3-D model, but the principal was afraid it might destroy the city. I couldn’t find the article, but here are some others:
1) A San Diego vice-principal called the bomb squad on an 11-year old’s motion detector.
2) A bomb squad blew up an “electromagnetic fishing pole” project in Pennsylvania .
3) In Florida, the bomb squad was called to investigate a GPS system.
4) NYC evacuated a school because of a depth gauge.
5) The bomb squad blew up an ‘egg drop’ experiment.
6) A bomb squad blew up another one in Portland.
7) Police called to investigate the classic ‘glitter tornado bottle’.
9) In New jersey, another science project was mistaken as a bomb…
10) In Atlanta, they blew up a pinhole camera.
Ethics Alarms 
Yep.
“This story has raised all sorts of questions about racism and religious persecution, and those are really important discussions that should be talked about and considered. But, for me, the conversation has to be bigger than just race and religion.”
She’s on to something. https://dreamsofeducation.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/knowing-kids-as-well-as-we-know-wine/
In a more rural or smaller school she would be right about knowing the students and she should be right about it in a large or urban school. Turning school into factories that turn out little uniform minds isn’t likely to improve things. Sadly Common Core is rapidly turning schools into standards based widget production centers.
Totally agree.
Then again, sometimes the Crazy Lady actually makes some sense.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sarah-palin-ahmed-clock_55fd7d59e4b0fde8b0ce7ddc
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-02-mit-student_N.htm
From 2008:
“An MIT student who caused an airport bomb scare by wearing a blinking circuit board on her shirt was ordered Monday to perform 50 hours of community service and write a letter of apology.
An East Boston District judge placed Star Simpson on probation for a year. If Simpson completes the probation, the disorderly conduct charge she faced will be dismissed.
Simpson, a 20-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology student from Lahaina, Hawaii, had gone to Logan International Airport in September to pick up her boyfriend.
Her sweat shirt, which she described as a piece of art, had a battery-powered circuit board with flashing lights. Security personnel became alarmed by the device and arrested her at gunpoint outside the airport.
Simpson originally was charged with possession of a hoax device, a felony, but prosecutors lowered that to misdemeanor disorderly conduct.”
I thought that the Ahmed Mohomed incident was ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than the ones above. Yes, most of them weren’t arrested, but even when it became evident to everyone that there was never a problem, people still were upset. In the first incident, the child and his parents were referred to counseling (for being interested in science and technology?).
I think the proper response to Ahmed Mohomed is to shake his hand and tell him “Congratulations, now you know how technically literate people are treated in America!”.