No more Political Parties!!!!

It doesnt work, it never has and it gets worse every year.
Here is what I propose--we go back to 8th grade civics class;

Teacher - "What type of government do we have class?"
Student - " It's a democracy."
Teacher - "Yes, but what kind of democracy is it?"
Student - Silence (how many kinds are there?)
Teacher - "Well, anyone?"
Student - "Republican one? But my parents are Democrats."
Teacher - "Not really. We have what is called a representitive democracy. Can anyone tell me what the means?"
Students - Silence (this is so boring, why do we need to know this crap anyway)
Teacher - "Okay, what this means is that we elect representitives to speak for us."
Students - Dear in the Headlight Stare (and that means what--im hungry when is lunch)



Well, and I wonder why people dont get it. They dont have a clue, we teach civics/government maybe twice in 12 years of public education and then wonder why we do not have more citizen involvement in government. On the flip side of the equation, we slept, talked, and cut up through the 2 classes that taught us about the workings of our government as the forefathers set it up and we wonder why the politicans dont do what they say they will.
Why should they, we dont do what we should as voters and citizens.
The system is not broken; the users are not following the instruction manual!
You know, that priceless piece of paper that starts with "We the people" commonly referred to as The Constitution.
If we want to end corruption and the status quo then we need to return to our roots. We need to do away with political parties and platforms. Every canidate should be indepentent. Everyone runs against each other in the primary and the top 2 vote getters are placed on the ballot for the general election. And that should hold true for the president also, in that case though it should be the top 4 canidates that make it on the ballot for the general election and there should be no running mates. The number 1 vote getter is President and the number 2 canidate is Vice-President.
The forefathers thought that true democracy would be inefficient and ineffective, wonder what they would think of how we have mutilated their ideas? They were thoughtful and careful in their establishment of our government. They created checks and balances, they divided the running of the government, they spread out the power to maintain equality. And they even provided for the states to be watch dogs of the federal government and vise versa.
But we have grown lazy and complacent. We do not follow the issues, we are too interested in the mud slinging. We do not question the canidates, we judge the sound-bites that someone else decided were the 'guts' of what was said. We listen to 'experts' and follow their lead instead of gathering the information and making the decissions themselves.
How did we get to this state and how far down do we have to go before we grab ourselves by the bootstraps and yank us back up where we belong?