The complaint in incoherent.
Well, that wasn’t what happened. When I saw the manual, I was even more confused. We’re moving from 40-minute lessons to 20-minute lessons each week, yet the manuals have a LOT more material to cover, especially doctrinal material. I like the focus on Christ rather than faith-promoting stories about the pioneers, but I also felt a bit like someone read through the scriptures to find pat answers to particular questions about Mormonism instead of reading to see what the scriptures actually had to say for themselves.
But
It seemed clear to me that no one is thinking about three-year-olds. These lessons are so far over their heads, it’s silly.
So, "what the scriptures actually [have] to say" is intelligible to three-year-olds? It's not intelligible to most adults without special training or years of experience. That is why most people just take it on authority.
But I think sometimes people in church imagine that teaching children by rote is what we’re supposed to be doing. One lesson even suggests that I have children repeat the phrase “Jesus Christ is the son of God.”
What a bunch of nonsense. Teaching barely-verbal children to repeat phrases is one way to get them to be verbal. Try learning a language without repeating phrases ever.
Of course the Church is indoctrinating them—that's the whole point! And what's wrong with that? I mean, their parents are Mormon and are responsible for making decisions on behalf of their children, and since they're at Church, presumably their parents have chosen to raise them Mormon. Why is it surprising that they are being enculturated as Mormons?
This idea makes me squirm a little. When I was in high school, one of my friends taught her two-year-old sister to repeat the quadratic formula. It was a great party trick, but this two-year-old didn’t understand the complicated math behind her recitation. She had no advantage over children who hadn’t learned this formula.
And you think your friend understood the math behind the quadratic formula? Most likely she did not deduce it herself or work through its proofs but simply learned the formula through rote memorization, not unlike a two-year old learning numbers.
And using children as puppets to make me feel good as a teacher or to make the parents feel good seems contrary to teaching the gospel of Christ.
Yes, better to make yourself feel terrible and to shame the parents into depression for choosing to raise their kids with the same wacky beliefs they have. We need a more progressive manual for three-year olds! One that lets them explore "what the scriptures actually say for themselves"! One that lets these little cuties explore whether Christ was the son of god or merely adopted by him at his crucifixion, and whether he was of the same or of merely similar substance with the father! And above all, we need a manual with more math and less verbal repetition!
"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."
—B. Redd McConkie