Originally Posted by
Saracen
The argument, though, if that kids are very impressionable, and they tend to soak up the teaching of parents (and schools as stand-in parents) with a less than critical eye. In other words, they lack the critical skills of an adult to take what they're taught and question, question, question. And that early learning tends to be hard to overcome later.
The argument, therefore, is that teaching faith is in fact indoctrination, because it's taught when they don't have the skills, or brain chemistry, to rationlise and analyse. It amounts to pre-conditioning kids, and as it's done on a subject that more or less by definition is incapable of rational proof, is perhaps even a form of child abuse, because you implant a set of beliefs without being able to prove if they're right or not. And by giving the parent the right to choose the kid's indoctrination, all you do is perpetuate the indoctrination the parent received.