Put yourself in a 14-year old's shoes. If you had a passion for electronics and invention and were snubbed this badly for building something cool and taking it to school, how would you feel? I, for one would have been devastated. At best, I would have lost interest in school and developed deep mistrust of teachers. At worst, I would have developed an aversion to being a maker and started neglecting my grades. Mind you, 14 years is when people are hyper-aware of such things. If this had happened in college or in primary school, most of us would have weathered it.

Zuckerberg, Obama, Clinton, Dash, and others are overcorrecting for this in order to ensure that the kid doesn't get dejected and discouraged from being a maker.

There's already far too much ostracizing of nerds and geeks in school to add powerful adult actors like school principals and police into the mix. I don't see any room for 'mixed feelings' here.

We just have to hope that the kid comes out of this as happy or happier and as or more successful than he'd otherwise have been.

As someone who was once 16 and suspended for much the same reasons, I developed a severe mistrust of authority, became a libertarian, and am pretty highly successful in my adulthood because of it. Unfortunately, it doesn't make me very popular at parties - Most people seems to have some strange stockholm syndrome for the shitty teachers they encountered.

They're not inviting him because he's a muslim who made a clock. They're inviting him because he's a kid who was wronged, and the situation is representative of the rotten american education system.

not just the education system, but the legal system as well.

I prefer to take the optimist view:

While you, I, or anyone else might debate the novelty or inventiveness of what the kid made, I'm sure he genuinely thought it was cool, and was excited about it.

Then, after asking if he could bring it in and show it off, he was wronged.

I want to believe they're inviting him because they don't want to stifle his spirit, and that not only is it good PR, it's also a message to kids who are interested in technology that they should absolutely pursue it, and to not get discouraged.

> Now Zuck and even the President invite him to visit for the same reasons (because he is a muslim who created a clock and brought it to school)

Wait....what? You think they're inviting him to visit because he's a Muslim student who made a clock? Do you really think he's the only Muslim student who's made a clock? I'm pretty sure it's because he was a student whose school reacted to his inventiveness by having him arrested (and of course because Obama/Zuckerberg heard about it). Even aside from the racism side of things, it's a fairly explicit symbol of the endemic squashing of children's creativity that makes the American school system such a (relative) disaster.

You may be right that the kid doesn't deserve all the attention he is garnering. But he did go to jail unjustly. He deserves something. To say otherwise is being a dick.