Here is some good stuff for you to ponder over and then go research for yourself.  Some, if not all of you know there is an internet system called “FireFox”, Mozilla Firefox to be exact and you can download it and use it to do all the internet stuff you need.  It’s like Microsofts “Internet Explorer” or the Google one called “Google Chrome”, I’m sure there are many others, but these are the ones I know about.  The purpose of this writing is about Firefox.

This great Mozilla Firefox thing is wonderful in todays world and I use it pretty much exclusively over the other choices.  It seems to be pretty quick to respond and I normally don’t have much problems with it.  (Now watch…all heck will break loose with it).

So, let me tell you about another Firefox that started a whole long time ago, long before the internet was even thought up.  And maybe, just maybe Mozilla Firefox has taken their name based on some of what you are about to read about…I don’t know.

It was 1966 and a newly graduated teacher got his first assignment in a school in Georgia.  A teacher with aspirations to become the best teacher in all the land…very motivated and intelligent.  He had a Masters degree and at the time, that was just one notch below a doctor!  (Now for my spin), this guy was pretty much like all the other teachers.  Engrained to make sure the students learned and could recite all the “important” dates and names that all the other teachers for decades before had done.  After all that was the way he learned all the good stuff and why would he change it?  He has a boss and if the boss says do things this way or that, well you best be doing it or go looking for another job!  Right?

So here he is with a group of typical 9th and 10th grade High School students, doing exactly what High School students their age do…stuff!  Stuff that isn’t quite right in the world of “listen to me” and “do as I say”…He had a burn in his podium from one of the students trying to light it on fire, during class!  A half a pocket knife blade sticking up out of the floor of the class room from one of the “little Johnnies” playing mummbly peg with his new Barlow knife, his chalk was missing from the box where he kept it and the tacks had been removed that held up his “world globe map”…irritation was not the word for him at this point!  A class room full of problem kids! (OCDC in todays world, not normal).

This guy was supposed to be teaching these kids about English, Geography and several other courses that other teachers had given up on.  He wanted to do a good job, but was at his wits end and wanted to show these kids just who was the boss.

Of course all of us know that when the kids don’t do what we want, we strike out with a vengeance and cause them grief and discontent!  Forcing them to do the unthinkable…learn something….Learn something that we want them to learn even if it is of no value other than teach them discipline!  What happened in 1492 and who was involved?  A big event happened in 1776, what was it and who did what to whom?  Who was the third President of the United States?  Who wrote the Star Spangled Banner?  What did Helen Keller do that was so important?  What was the “shot heard round the world”?  That sort of stuff.  What good is it?  Sure, I can write stuff in this story, but do any of you know the answers to any of it?  Probably not, but you now have Google to look it up!

There are lots more important things to learn than that stuff.  Math is a much more important subject…at least you can use it in your everyday things.  Geology too…Hey Ed…What kind of rock is this?   And of course Ed’s answer is “Leaverite”!  (Leave ‘er right where you found it).  While driving down the freeway you can look across the valley and see the fanning shape of the terrain as it comes out at the bottom of a deep canyon…what’s that called?  An alluvial fan!  Everyone knows that.  And to me that is much more important than knowing that Betsy Ross made the first Official American Flag.  Good for Betsy.

So, here he is, teaching the stuff that the kids will remember (maybe) just long enough to pass the test with a D minus and then forget it all before the end of the next recess.  Why waste his time.

So, being the very brilliant man he was, he decided to get the class members to make up their own curriculum, sort of.  You see he was new to the area of Georgia he found himself teaching in and they had their quirky ways in them parts.  They had sayings that most other people in the U.S. wouldn’t know what they meant.  They planted crops by the sign of the moon.  They hunted and fished and made stuff by hand and ate weird things (pickled pigs feet come to mind).  So, in order to get his kids involved and still learn how “English” was to be properly used and how sentences were to be constructed and what an adverb was and how it differed from a adjective etc. he made them assignments to go home and interview their parents, neighbors or friends about the different things that made their people who they were.  What defined them in their individual characters and on and on.

He involved the kids in making up a list of what was unique about the area and then made the assignments accordingly.  As it turned out, nearly all (not all) but nearly all the students took a big interest in the project and in the end, (six years later), they compiled a book and called it “Firefox”!  And then they had it printed and sold it!  Not only did they sell it locally, but it became a best seller!

It didn’t take long before this old boy teacher became the favorite of all the students and everyone wanted to be in his class.  They ended up printing the original Firefox book and 11 more just like it with different stories and things that were a part of the history and living style of the local area!  They even went on to create a local museum and history building!

A true story folks!

A Google search will fill your screen up with nothing but Mozilla Firefox things, but keep scrolling down and changing pages and pretty soon you will find “Firefox Magazine” (maybe start your search with that)!

Do you want to know something about Church Ministers?  Snake Handling?  Foot washing?  Fiddle making?  Horse trading? Or about Sassafras Tea?  These are your books!

Bears Butt

Oct. 26, 2013