The War on Creation Has Reached Middle School

Eleven-year-olds are the target audience, and that is no accident.

A middle school in Bethesda, Maryland, chose children barely out of elementary school to begin teaching them that their bodies may be wrong and that the Creator who made them cannot be trusted.

The lesson was delivered to sixth graders at Westland Middle School during what administrators called “Transgender Awareness Week.”

The school insists the goal was awareness and respect. But what students were actually taught runs far deeper than manners or kindness.

Beneath the language of inclusion sits a message that strikes at the heart of creation itself and, by extension, at God.

The Lesson in the Classroom

According to materials obtained and reported by Fox News, sixth graders were shown a 12-page slideshow that instructed them on how to think about gender and identity.

Students were told that gender is “who you feel you are,” not something grounded in biology. They were taught to distinguish between sex and gender. They were introduced to the concept of nonbinary identity and given tips for identifying as nonbinary.

They were asked to discuss how people know whether they are a “girl” or a “boy,” and why the first thing announced about a newborn baby is the baby’s gender.

Videos were played during the presentation, including one from a nonbinary online creator who explained how to “bind” breasts. Binding refers to wrapping and flattening the chest to appear less feminine, a practice that carries real physical risks and is deeply controversial even among medical professionals.

This material was presented to children who are just entering puberty.

The Official Defense

School officials responded with the familiar script.

The lesson, they said, was about awareness, respect, and teaching students to support peers from different backgrounds and lived experiences. Middle school, they explained, is a time when questions come up, and schools must reinforce that bullying and harassment are unacceptable.

No parent disputes the need to teach kindness.

But kindness does not require instructing children to doubt their own bodies.

Respect does not require ideological coaching.

And preventing bullying does not require teaching eleven-year-olds that biological reality is optional.

The Hidden Message

This is where the real story begins.

These lessons are not neutral. They are not value-free. They carry a worldview, and that worldview has unavoidable theological implications.

Children are being told that the body can be wrong.

That creation can misfire.

That identity comes from feelings, not from design.

If God exists, this teaching implies He either makes mistakes or intentionally traps children in the wrong bodies. And if that is true, then God is not trustworthy. Or worse, He is cruel.

The alternative message is even starker. If there is no Creator at all, then there is no order, no purpose, no meaning beyond self-definition.

Either way, the conclusion is the same. Creation cannot be trusted. Authority does not come from above. Truth comes from within.

That is not education. That is theology.

Why Children Are the Target

Most adults can see through ideological language. Children cannot.

Eleven- and twelve-year-olds are still forming their understanding of reality. They are impressionable. They are vulnerable. They are searching for answers about who they are and where they fit.

When schools introduce radical identity concepts at this age, they are not merely offering information. They are shaping how children interpret their own confusion, discomfort, and everyday developmental struggles.

That concern was voiced plainly by Defending Education, which monitors ideological activism in schools.

Its communications director, Erika Sanzi, described the lesson as cult-like and warned that while some children will shrug it off, others may be pushed onto a path from which they may never fully return.

That warning should not be dismissed. Identity confusion introduced during childhood can echo for decades.

This Is Bigger Than One School

What happened in Bethesda is not an isolated mistake. It is part of a national pattern.

School districts increasingly frame radical gender ideology as compassion, while quietly introducing concepts that undermine family beliefs, religious convictions, and even basic biology.

Parents are told not to worry. God is never mentioned. Faith is never discussed.

But the message is unmistakable.

Your body is suspect. Creation is negotiable. Meaning is self-made.

That belief system does not come from science, but from ideology and how you feel.

And it is being taught to children who still need hall passes to use the restroom.

The Question Parents Must Ask

The question is no longer whether these lessons are appropriate.

The question is whether parents will accept a public school system that teaches children, implicitly or explicitly, that creation itself is a mistake, that God is cruel, that the Almighty cannot be trusted.

Because once a child is taught that their body lies, the One who created it is recast as a monster.

And that lesson, once planted, is tough to undo.

Martin Mawyer is the President of Christian Action Network, host of the “Shout Out Patriots” podcast, and author of When Evil Stops Hiding. Follow him on Substack for more action alerts, cultural commentary, and real-world campaigns defending faith, family, and freedom.