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I'm going to preface this by saying that this is not going to be a rant about caster supremacy or vancian magic.

In fact, the only edition that I've ever noticed a marked disparity between casters and beaters is 3.x and I quite like Vancian magic for it's simplicity.

No...what I feel needs to be fixed is the classic D&D spells list and magic progression. Basically, I think the whole thing needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up.

First of all, the 1-9 spell level progression needs to be taken out behind the barn and put down like Old Yeller. I know it's tradition and all that, but if we clung to everything for tradition's sake, then women, brown people and renters still wouldn't be able to vote...so let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that things must remain in stasis for all time.

The only purpose that ye olde 9 level magic progression serves is to create a platform wherein a player gets to choose between 8 slightly more powerful versions of "Charm _____". This is a bad thing, because it creates too much clutter and  redundancy,  in terms of page space, rules, and design space.

No...what the system needs is a pared down spell list wherein spells scale in such a manner that they are effective throughout a characters career, from low levels all the way up to epic tier play. So instead of having Charm: Person, Animal, Monster, Houseplant, Gazebo, etc. Just have a spell called "Charm" and make sure it remains valid through all levels.

Which brings me to my second point, the classic spell list. Kill it. I know that having "Tenser's Face-melting Guitar Solo" is classic D&D and all...but the list is overburdened with redundancy and esotericism. Look at Forcecage and Otiluke's Resilient Sphere. Both create a barrier of force around a target, preventing them from moving, or from being interfered with from outside, in essence. But the actual differences between the two spells are just minutiae.

I think that you should look towards magic in Savage Worlds, which has a handful of broadly defined spells that manage to cover most of the conceptual ground of the classic D&D spell list. Here, you have a spell like Armor, which essentially protects the subject of the spell from taking damage. This armor could take the form of stone skin, a forcefield, wreathing oneself in bone or ice, etc. The actual flavor is up to the caster, but mechanically it merely grants a pile of temp HP that increase as the caster levels.

The benefits of killing the 1-9 spell level progression and ousting the classic spell list are a sleaker, more streamlined and user-friendly system. Not only does this mean less clutter and redundancy, but also a lower page count (Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion details this magic system and all of it's various options in maybe 20 pages or less, as opposed to 3e's 100 pages).

Not only that, but the pared down spell list means that instead of the 36+ spells of varying spell levels that high level casters get per diem, you can scale that down to like 12 a day. This means that NPC and higher level PC spell casters are a lot easier to generate, and are much easier to balance against melee types.

Also, having a pared down and more iconic spell list ala' Savage Worlds, creates much stronger decision points for players, which makes spell casters a much less intimidating proposition for more casual or less experienced players. You know...like your 12 year old nephew who wants to play Harry Potter like in the books he reads.

+1 to the OP here

Disagree, making that will kill the dnd. It could be nice in other games. But this is dnd, a classic.
I think your entire post is demagogy. No offense.