{"id":90056,"date":"2025-02-05T11:33:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T16:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historians.org\/?p=90056"},"modified":"2025-04-08T09:20:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T13:20:06","slug":"aha-oah-statement-on-executive-order-ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.historians.org\/news\/aha-oah-statement-on-executive-order-ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling\/","title":{"rendered":"AHA\u2013OAH Statement on Executive Order \u201cEnding Radical Indoctrination in K\u201312 Schooling\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) have released a joint statement on the presidential executive order \u201cEnding Radical Indoctrination in K\u201312 Schooling.\u201d<\/a> The executive order \u201cgrossly mischaracterizes history education across the United States, alleging educational malpractice.\u201d \u201cThe executive order\u2019s narrow conception of patriotism and patriotic education does more than deny the actual history of American democracy; it also undermines its own goals of a rigorous education and merit-based society,\u201d the statement reads. \u201cWe reject the premise that it is \u2018anti-American\u2019 or \u2018subversive\u2019 to learn the full history of the United States with its rich and dramatic contradictions, challenges, and conflicts alongside its achievements, innovations, and opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

To date, 40 organizations have signed on to the statement.<\/p>\n

\n

AHA\u2013OAH Statement on Executive Order \u201cEnding Radical Indoctrination in <\/strong>K\u201312<\/strong> Schooling\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The presidential executive order \u201cEnding Radical Indoctrination in K\u2013<\/strong>12 Schooling<\/a>,\u201d signed on January 29, 2025, grossly mischaracterizes history education across the United States, alleging educational malpractice\u2014teachers supposedly \u201c[i]mprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation\u2019s children.\u201d The order uses this caricature to justify sweeping and unprecedented federal interventions in public education.<\/p>\n

This inflammatory rhetoric is not new. For the past four years, the same largely fabricated accusations have provided justification for efforts by some state legislatures to prohibit \u201cdivisive concepts\u201d in history and social studies education, along with other extreme restrictions that the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and American Historical Association (AHA) have separately and jointly opposed.<\/p>\n

Taken together, this state legislation and executive order not only disregard the training, ethics, and lifelong work of history teachers; they also demean American students by assuming that patriotism can be ignited only by triumphal stories and that our students are incapable of forming complex opinions about their nation\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

The sweeping claims of \u201cradical indoctrination,\u201d moreover, are almost entirely unmoored from the reality of history education in thousands of classrooms across the United States. The AHA recently published American Lesson Plan<\/em><\/a>, the most comprehensive study of secondary US history education undertaken in the 21st century. The AHA surveyed over 3,000 middle and high school US history educators, conducted hundreds of interviews, and analyzed thousands of pages of instructional materials from geographically diverse school districts of all shapes and sizes. The report delineates what is actually taught in secondary school history classes.<\/p>\n

This careful research revealed a landscape of public education dramatically different from the \u201cindoctrination\u201d alleged in this executive order and \u201cdivisive concepts\u201d state legislation. AHA researchers found dedicated history teachers, professionals who are primarily concerned with helping their students learn central elements of our nation\u2019s history. Nearly 100 percent of the teachers surveyed rated \u201cdeveloping informed citizens for participation in a democratic society\u201d as a goal for their history courses, and 94 percent identified this as an important or very important outcome. This examination of the lesson plans and materials they use in the classroom corroborates these findings. Developing critically informed citizens to participate in our democracy is the opposite of indoctrination.<\/p>\n

This executive order, however, mandates ideological instruction and the politicization of history grounded in ahistorical thinking. The order draws upon the deeply flawed and roundly debunked 2021 report of the \u201cPresident\u2019s Advisory 1776 Commission\u201d\u2014a panel devoid of experts in the history of the United States\u2014which the OAH<\/a> characterized in 2020 as a partisan attempt to \u201crestrict historical pedagogy, stifle deliberative discussion, and take us back to an earlier era characterized by a limited vision of the US past.\u201d<\/p>\n

The executive order\u2019s narrow conception of patriotism and patriotic education does more than deny the actual history of American democracy; it also undermines its own goals of a rigorous education and merit-based society.<\/p>\n

This is neither history nor patriotism. An uncomplicated celebration of American greatness flattens the past into a parade of platitudes devoid of the context, conflict, contingency, and change over time that are central to historical thinking. We instead support our nation\u2019s educators as they help students learn how past generations fought to make the United States a \u201cmore perfect union,\u201d in the words of our Constitution. As they teach the history of how people in the past chose to devote, risk, and in some cases even lose their lives challenging our nation\u2019s most glaring imperfections, they teach our youth resilience, courage, and pride. They also teach them history.<\/p>\n

We reject the premise that it is \u201canti-American\u201d or \u201csubversive\u201d to learn the full history of the United States with its rich and dramatic contradictions, challenges, and conflicts alongside its achievements, innovations, and opportunities. History education that is rooted in professional expertise and integrity can inspire patriotism in American students through deep and honest engagement with our nation\u2019s past and prepare them for informed civic engagement. Teachers want students to grapple with complex history. This history includes the rich legacy of freedom and democracy built into the nation\u2019s foundation. It also includes legacies of contradictions to those principles present at the nation\u2019s founding and beyond. It includes the struggles of Americans across nearly 250 years to enlarge that legacy\u2014to end slavery, to end prejudice against immigrants from across the world, to end poverty, to build a nation where everyone has the freedom to pursue their dreams.<\/p>\n

The AHA and the OAH advocate for the importance of history in American public life and for education that prepares our nation\u2019s students for informed citizenship and work. Like all histories, American history is complicated and fascinating; learning about our past should stimulate discussion and debate rooted in evidence and professional scholarship. For that to happen, we must let our teachers do what they do best: teach without interference or ideological tests. And let our students learn how<\/em> to think, rather than what<\/em> to think.<\/p>\n

The following organizations have signed on to this statement:<\/p>\n

African American Intellectual History Society
\nAfrican Studies Association
\nAmerican Association for State and Local History
\nAmerican Association of University Professors
\nAmerican Education Research Association, Division F (History & Historiography)
\nAmerican Journalism Historians Association
\nAmerican Studies Association
\nAssociation of Ancient Historians
\nAssociation for Computers and the Humanities
\nAssociation for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies
\nAssociation of University Presses
\nBerkshire Conference of Women Historians
\nConference on Asian History
\nCoordinating Council for Women in History
\nFlorida Freedom to Read Project
\nFreedom to Read Project
\nHistorians for Peace and Democracy
\nImmigration and Ethnic History Society
\nLabor and Working-Class History Association
\nLGBTQ+ History Association
\nMidwestern History Association
\nNational Council for the Social Studies
\nNational Council of Teachers of English
\nNational Council on Public History
\nNetwork of Concerned Historians
\nNorth American Conference on British Studies
\nNew England Historical Association
\nNew England History Teachers Association
\nOral History Association
\nPeace History Society
\nPolish American Historical Association
\nThe Reacting Consortium
\nSocial Welfare History Group
\nSociety of Textual Scholarship
\nSociety for Historians of American Foreign Relations
\nSociety for Historians of the Gilded Age & Progressive Era
\nSociety for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender
\nSociety for U.S. Intellectual History
\nSociety of Architectural Historians
\nWestern History Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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