By BILL MAXWELL, St. Petersburg Times

Although America's education system is one of the best in the world, the philosophy that underpins the system is seriously flawed.

We have two separate cultures in education: elementary and secondary schools (K-12) and postsecondary schools (undergraduate and graduate institutions). This separation is expensive, wastes human capital and harms the public welfare.

Not surprisingly, our fair city of St. Petersburg, which has a history of racial division, once again finds itself confronting a situation that could reopen old wounds. This time, black youths or black organizations are not the instigators. It is mayoral candidate Kathleen Ford, a 52-year-old white lawyer.

While tens of thousands of children in public and private schools nationwide were prevented from listening to President Barack Obama's televised pep talk two weeks ago, students at the Piney Woods School in Mississippi were required to listen and write an essay about what the talk meant to them.

No other foreign policy initiative has more consistently tripped up U.S. presidents than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Now, President Obama is in line to run the gantlet. Like previous presidents, he faces the deal-breaking issue of Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

We now are hearing that President Obama's honeymoon with voters is over, that his poll numbers are falling, that the soaring rhetoric of the campaign no longer makes the Democratic faithful swoon so easily.

If this is a real trend and not temporary disgruntlement, it is a good thing.

Once again, Barack Obama, our postracial president, has unwittingly stepped into the briar patch of race. This time, however, the controversy does not involve white people. It involves a group of the president's fellow African-Americans.

I retired from the St. Petersburg Times as a full-time writer on May 31. Let me say at the outset that I enjoyed my 13 years at the newspaper. It was my dream job, the best I ever had. And I had more than a dozen as an adult.

While I recently was abroad, one of my hosts mentioned she had heard or read somewhere that President Barack Obama had "gotten into some kind of trouble" related to race.

Even before I had adjusted to the altitude of the world's highest capital, my hosts and friends, members of a generations-old Bolivian family, hauled me off to a parade. Nearly 1 million people from every South American country and tourists from elsewhere flooded the streets and sidewalks of the central city.

I consider myself to be a traveler who attempts to absorb the essence of a place through the behaviors and practices that give its people their identity. My major focus is not the politics but the currents and trends that produce the politics of the place.