Thanks to Ann Althouse, via Instapundit, I found this posting on boys going to a private NY City school, who spend 9 hours a day memorizing the Koran. The reward is (apparently)…
The young boys are taught that if they memorize the entire Koran, they will gain admittance to heaven and the right to choose 10 persons to bring along with them.
Furthermore, they don’t even understand what they are memorizing. It’s not reading since there isn’t any comprehension.
…Meanwhile, these boys — who must be quite smart to have a shot at memorizing the 6,200 verses — are deprived of all other education, including instruction in Arabic, the language of the text they are memorizing phonetically. (Nor are they provided with a translation: they are learning only to pronounce sounds.)
Ann points out there are legal implications due to state educational requirements, not to mention the more obvious concerns.
