Rys Sommefeldt

Building clocks

A couple of days ago a 14 year old kid in the United States was arrested after showing one of his teachers a digital clock that he’d made by himself. Confused by a contraption they couldn’t understand and, no matter how much it pains me to say it, probably heightened by the fact the kid has brown skin and is called Ahmed Mohamed, his school called the police thinking it might be a bomb.

It’s so sad to see a young kid’s life interrupted, even though he’ll probably have a great time now with all the support he’s bound to get in the wake of it happening, by ignorance. Crippled by that ignorance, adults trusted with the education of Ahmed and everyone else at his school completely let the students down by being unable to reason about what was in front of them.

If it’s your job to educate and develop minds of any age, to allow the people you’re teaching to learn enough about the world around them to want to also build and create their own things in it, it’s also your job to assume the best in those people and encourage them in doing so.

Do nothing apart from help Ahmed to build an even better clock next time.