Heh, I think for once, we actually are in the right thread.
Our educational system could definitely do with some amendments. Mandatory attendance for grades K-5, but I think older students deserve some leniency. I'm habitually truant, and have been forging doctor notes since 6th grade. That said, I'm also a straight A student and in the 99th percentile in my class in a ridiculously competitive International Baccalaureate school. Last year, I only went to school 143 days (out of 180, for you non-Americans). I was lost some of the time, and make up work was a b*tch, but I still maintained my class rank, whilst taking seven academics. The significance of this is that mandating students that need to go to school (especially if they don't need to be there) is a waste of resources, effort, and money. I propose we make students show up based on grades. So along as you are able to provide your own accommodations, you only have to show up in classes you have a B or less in. Pretty much junior year on, people have their own cars. So if I have all A's, but I have a B 6th period, I can sleep in 'til 12, hit up that class, and go home. It might make sense that Mondays are mandatory, so teachers can lay out the lesson plan on the board along with test dates, so people know what they're responsible for. (We used to be given exam exemptions prior to the swine flu madness, but then the county found out it's illegal to give students an incentive to go to school ) People should still be allowed to drop out at 16. ..I don't really feel it's fair to force people to go to school, but I've seen the stupidity of the people that do go, so.. I think it's best. =/
By freedom, we mean personal freedoms, like sex (Texas is trying to make sodomy illegal ), drugs, and rock n roll (is all our brains and bodies need, sex and drugs and rock n' roll, are very good indeed. (Haha, sorry, that's a song)). The US should be able to say "This is our country, and this is how WE govern it, and if you don't agree, gtfo", but people should have the inalienable civil rights we were promised. Laws like the Baker Act (if you look like you're going to kill yourself, hospitals can detain you for up to 72 hours) need to be removed because the state has no right to say what we do to ourselves. I shouldn't be able to die for this country before I can drink in it. And in the UK, you can legally have sex before you can look at it? Huh?
There's this pretty rad anarchist (anarchitect) group called the Space Hi-jackers, that literally hi-jack space. They took corporate land and had a cricket game in the middle of the night. In the UK, the metro had to be rerouted because of Circle Parties they were having, which involved playing music and partying while the train as in motion. A group in Boston schedules times to ride the T pantless and hosts cross-city scavenger hunts. These people redefine space, space that has been stolen from us by the corporate world. The Native Americans had one thing right. Land shouldn't be owned, it should be shared. The world is a huge community, but no one acts like it is.
I think the perfect system would be somewhere between full blown libertarianism and direct democracy (none of this representative crap. The internet makes this possible again), but I haven't found the balance yet.
The scary thing? I realized a few days ago that if I become a US citizen, I'll be old enough to vote in the next presidential election.