A Lesson on Church, State For City School Officials
City-funded teacher Nina Kossman may have shown poor judgment by discussing the story of Adam and Eve and showing a portrait of a “myth” about them (“Adam and peeved,” April 2).
But the greater fault lies with the Department of Education for providing educational services to religious schools at taxpayers’ expense.
If the parents at Razi School are upset about this relatively minor misstep, they should be given a tutorial on the free services their children are receiving through federal and city funds.
Similarly, the Department of Education should be admonished for its complicity in violating the separation of church and state. In the end, this is the main issue, not the scapegoating of a veteran teacher. Gerard Rosenthal Manhattan
What’s most shocking about the case of the teacher removed from a private Muslim school for teaching that the story of Adam and Eve is a myth is that the parents’ central complaint may have been that the teacher discussed Jews with the children.
When hatred for the Jewish people becomes so ingrained, is there any wonder that the prospect for peace in the Middle East is so remote? Elliot Press Bergenfield, NJ
Why are students who attend a private school with yearly tuition be- tween $5,500 and $5,700 a year qualifying for free lunch?
It seems attending public school and paying for your kids’ lunch would be appropriate. Kevin Scanlon Maspeth
The case of Kossman being exiled for her position on Adam and Eve illustrates why providing public-school teachers to religious schools should be abandoned.
Regardless of how scrupulously the teacher tries to avoid controversy, situations like this are bound to come up and not only in Muslim schools.
Now taxpayers are on the hook for this teacher’s hefty salary while she sits in a rubber room because she unintentionally gave offense in a situation that no teacher should find herself in in the first place. David Rabinovitz Brooklyn