An argument over Adam and Eve between a city-paid teacher and third-graders at a private Muslim school has landed the instructor in pedagogical purgatory, The Post has learned.
English teacher Nina Kossman committed the sin of “telling the truth,” she said of her expulsion from the Razi School in Woodside, Queens, which uses taxpayer-funded city Department of Education teachers in a federally-mandated program for poor kids.
Kossman infuriated parents by telling their children that Adam is “not real.” She noted that Judaism, Christianity and Islam share the myth, thinking it would “help build up tolerance” for other faiths. She also inadvertently showed kids a classical painting of the first couple as imagined in the Garden of Eden — nude.
A group of angry parents showed up at the school the next day to complain that she “discussed Jews with them and showed them pictures of naked people,” Kossman said Imani Al-Amin, an assistant to the principal, told her.
“The parents were in shock — in a fury,” the assistant said, according to Kossman. “You have to understand that this is a different environment.”
Last week, Kossman was cast out of Razi and exiled to a DOE “rubber room,” a Queens office used for educators facing discipline. While she does nothing but menial paperwork, taxpayers foot her $90,000 salary.
Kossman’s troubles started as her third-graders assembled.
“It was a conversation between the children, but I was right there,” she recalled. “One girl was trying to say that girls are as important as boys because without women there would not be any men.”
The girl turned to Kossman: “Teacher, all people are born from a woman’s belly, right?”
Kossman agreed, but a boy chimed in: “One person was not born from a woman’s belly — Adam!”
Kossman replied, “It’s just a story, a myth. It’s not real.”
The boy objected: “Adam is not a story! He is real!”
But Kossman persisted, “The story of Adam and Eve belongs to three religions — first Judaism, then Christianity, then Islam.”
When some kids said they didn’t believe it, Kossman opened her laptop and called up the Wikipedia page on Adam and Eve. Up popped the famous painting by 17th-Century artist Paul Rubens of nude Adam and Eve.
“Ooh! Naked people!” kids cried. “We’re not allowed to look at naked people!”
Kossman said she covered the picture with her hands, but read from the Wikipedia entry, which says Adam and Eve is a “creation myth” of the three religions.
With kids still calling her wrong, Kossman insisted, “Well, it’s up to you to think that, but it happens to be true.”
An NYU Islamic studies professor who did not want to be named faulted Kossman: “Many religious people think that someone in the scripture is actually an historical truth. To say it is a myth can be deemed offensive.”
The pre-K-to-12 Razi School charges tuition of $5,500 to $5,700 a year, yet is entitled to use several city DOE teachers because it is a “Title I” school, where at least 40 percent of students qualify for free lunch. The DOE spends $42.6 million a year on teachers and other personnel in non-public Title I schools, the Independent Budget Office reports.
Razi touts a college-prep curriculum, but also boasts a mosque where students pray about an hour a day.
Navy blue uniforms are required. Boys wear dress shoes. Girls must don white head scarfs completely covering their hair.
Female staffers also wear hijabs, but Kossman was exempt. Two other DOE teachers in the school are men.
Kossman said she’s never gotten in trouble before. Since 1991, the DOE has sent her to about 20 religious schools, mostly Catholic but several yeshivas and one other Muslim school. She was assigned to Razi in September 2014.
She teaches English as a second language to students who speak Urdu, Bengali, Farsi and Arabic at home, using fairy tales and literature in lessons. “The children like me very much. They like my classes,” she said.
Kossman, who emigrated from Russia to the US with her parents in 1973, describes herself as non-religious. She has written seven books, including her own poetry and translations, and an autobiography of her childhood in the Soviet Union. She is also a painter and sculptor.
DOE teachers assigned to non-public schools “don’t have any specific guidelines,” Kossman said.
“It’s generally understood that we should not talk about religion to students,” she added. “I probably should have avoided talking about it.”
Al-Amin and Principal Ghassan Elcheikhali refused to comment, referring questions to the DOE, which said Kossman is under investigation.