Consistency and Inconsistency of Indoctrination in Religious Education

The indoctrination method is one of the main methods in religious education. Critiques of this method believe that we should use methods in education that lead to attitude changes in pupils. They believe that indoctrination method is a mechanical one that causes characters such as submission and obedience in pupils.Supporters believe that application of other methods such as a rational one is dependent on intellectual development and awareness in pupils, but we know that in childhood period intellectual process development is very rare. They believe the childhood is the right of religious education. We can use indoctrination method to establish some habits, humanity and ethical characters. Also by this method, we can stablize faith in upper developmental periods. So in this paper, we examine challenges, outcome, benefits of application of indoctrination method in religious education and consistency and inconsistency of it.