Boys blowing up things has a long and honorable tradition.   In David McCullough's current book, The Greater Journey:   Americans in Paris 1830-1900 (which is an absolute joy to read--full of great stories), he notes that James Fennimore Cooper, despite (or because of) being the scion of a prominent family (Cooperstown named for his father), was expelled from Yale at 16.

Reasons included 1) locking a donkey in a recitation room and 2) exploding a home-made bomb under a dorm door.

This was about 1805.