School originates from the Greek word “leisure”.  When translated it means the freedom to do something.  Learning was enjoyable for me.  It continues to be.  Education should be this way for all students.  But why is it not?  ACT (The American College Testing) organization has estimated that 1/4 of high school graduates meet college ready standards.  As a seasoned educator, I would say that this is probably true.  My first year teaching 7th grade science, I asked random students to read the text-book during our lesson.  I was shocked and appalled at the lack of reading fluency of my 7th graders.  Today, American students rank 17th in Science and 25th in Math when compared to other industrialized countries.  After WWI, American students ranked number 1.  As American education has shifted away from local control and has become more federalized, student performance has decreased.  Not long after the founding of America, schools were local.  Towns would personally fund their school.  The Bible was taught in school under the Constitution.  Children learned truth and values.  I so enjoy the older generation because they learned biblical truth while being educated.  As a whole, they know how to behave far better than the younger generations.  My school celebrated Christmas with a school wide Christmas program.  Today, one of my favorite songs is, “What Child Is This”, which was sung by my class.  We made Christmas angels for art.  The older students did a Jewish dance for Hanukkah.  Text books were more colorful and informative.  Today, I wonder where the depth of information has gone.  Elementary math books are missing logic, social studies books hardly have any real history, and science is missing key facts.  Where’s the meat in education?  It is missing.  Children get to sit in their classrooms reading mostly fiction while the world passes by.  Their world is repetitive and numbing.  No wonder student performance has dropped significantly in the last 100 years.  It is time to make education local again with parents taking responsibility and being involved in their own town schools.  “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God,”  Ecclesiastes 2:24 ESV