There is almost no way around indoctrinating your child. You are trying to give your kid values - your values. Since it will take quite a while until your kids are old enough to evaluate your values, you are indoctrinating.

The only thing you can do is to encourage critical thinking, teach logical reasoning and healthy distrust of authority and in the end your "kid" will be able to shed the parts of the unwanted parts of the indoctrination.

The only problem is when you don't do the critical thinking part, which doesn't seem to be high on the list of values for the ultra-religious types. So they are stuck with the ideology and have no way out.

While I do agree that there is no way around using some form of indoctrination on your child at some point, I do think we should reevaluate some of the methods we use on our children. If I as a parent want my child to grow up to be intelligent and have an excellent perception of reality and what it is, how can I justify adding false beliefs to that perception(i.e. Santa Claus or anything else like that). If a child cannot trust a parent to inform him/her correctly on the realities of the world then who else is there to trust? I know some of these points are moot to when it comes to children of an early age , but I do think the thought deserves contemplation.

I guess I should have clarified a bit more. I forgot to put "religious child indoctrination." My fault.

Any parent is going to indoctrinate their child with their values including religious. However, when the parent enforces a single view which prevents or denies the child's freedom, that is wrong.

The trouble with 'critical thinking' issue is that has nothing to do with morality.

You should have some basic knowledge about what's good, what's bad. And it has nothing to do with logic.

It is something that we get from parents, friends, society. It may not be logical at all.

And i am terrified to imagine a person that has no morale beliefs, just raw thinking. It would be someone like Hannibal Lector. A cold clever sociopath.