Mr. Obama,
As have many Americans in the past few days, I have heard about the case of Ahmed Mohamed. Like you, I applaud his genius. However, I am concerned. I have tried to train myself for years to imagine things from various perspectives in different situations. I am sure you need to do this on a daily basis with your job.
For a moment, try to imagine the following scenario. Imagine that you are a teacher. You are working in an elementary school educating the future of our society (aka: our children). As a teacher, you are responsible for not only teaching these students Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Physical Education, Music, Art, and other curriculum, but in listening to them, consoling them, helping them, and, while they are at school, you are responsible for protecting each and every one of them. A common practice among teachers when talking about their students is to say, "My kids...". This is because, as a teacher, your students become, to an extent, like your children. You spend multiple hours with these children every week. You teach them. You listen to them. You live with them for about 6 hours every day.
They are important to you. Many teachers would do anything to protect their students ... even from one another. So imagine that you are a teacher and one of your students brings a contraption to school that you have never seen. It has wires protruding from it. Is your first thought a clock? Most likely not. Most likely, you would not know what it was. I think it would be perfectly okay, and even right, to be slightly alarmed. Because that is your job as a protector. You need to be suspicious because, if you are not, bad things might happen. You are a father. I think you would agree that it is better to be hyper-aware of your daughters and suspicious of anything that has even the potential to hurt them. That is your right as a father. And it is a teacher's right and duty to react similarly while s/he is responsible for students' safety. So I do not blame the staff at Ahmed's school for being suspicious. They are not only responsible for Ahmed's safety but of many other children as well.
Now imagine that you are a police officer. You receive a call that a young boy has brought an unidentified item to his school site. Your duty to your community is to protect and serve them. In every situation you need to be thorough in order to do your best to protect your community. When you receive this call, your job is to do a thorough job investigating the situation to ensure the safety of everyone. Your job is to be over-cautious. The police officers involved in Ahmed's case looked at his clock, questioned him in safety, and then, upon discovering that the contraption was a clock, they let him go. If my child was at Ahmed's school and staff did not know if a bomb or another contraption was on school grounds, I would hope and pray that officers would react similarly to protect my child and the others at the school site. It is so much better to be over-cautious then to risk the safety of people.
Now, imagine that you are one of the teachers or police officers involved in this case. You did what you felt was right in a moment to protect a school site and complete your job and duty to your community. Instead of supporting you, you are threatened with being sued. As if adding insult to injury, the president of the United States congratulates the student who caused the commotion but does nothing to acknowledge you.
The school staff and police officers were doing their jobs. I do not think Ahmed meant to cause trouble. I do think his invention is a great one. But he could have let the school know what he had before bringing an unidentified object to school. I fear that you are belittling our teachers and police officers by ignoring their service and instead congratulating someone that caused them fear. Should we allow every student to bring unidentifiable, wired objects onto our school grounds? Will every school or police officer that reacts be sued and ridiculed? What if schools and police start fearing this reaction? What if they stop reacting? What if a bomb is brought to school but dismissed as another invention? What if people die when it goes off? I know that school staff and police will never stop reacting because they understand the risks and accept the price. But you are supposed to be our leader. Can you not see that you are not supporting a safe community by your reaction (or lack thereof in regards to school staff and officers) in this situation?
Police especially are already facing enough right now in our society. Please, acknowledge their sacrifices. Acknowledge their bravery. Acknowledge their service. But don't turn more people against them. If you want to invite people to the White House, then why not the families of the police officers that have died in the last week? Unfortunately, you would have people to invite. I pray the violence in our country stops and until it does, I thank the brave men and women who continue to go to work and protect their communities, even when their communities do not support them. They are the heroes we need. I can't help thinking that they are a little like Batman - but even braver and more important to our society.
To good decisions moving forward.
