Leading History Organizations Issue Statement on K–12 Education Executive Order

WASHINGTON. DC — The American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) have released a joint statement on the presidential executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling.” The executive order “grossly mischaracterizes history education across the United States, alleging educational malpractice.” “The executive order’s 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,” the statement reads. “We reject the premise that it is ‘anti-American’ or ‘subversive’ to learn the full history of the United States with its rich and dramatic contradictions, challenges, and conflicts alongside its achievements, innovations, and opportunities.”

The statement is reproduced below and available on the websites of both organizations. To date, 18 organizations have signed on to the statement.

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AHA–OAH Statement on Executive Order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling”

The presidential executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling,” signed on January 29, 2025, grossly mischaracterizes history education across the United States, alleging educational malpractice—teachers supposedly “[i]mprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children.” The order uses this caricature to justify sweeping and unprecedented federal interventions in public education.

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 “divisive concepts” 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.

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’s past.

The sweeping claims of “radical indoctrination,” 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, 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.

This careful research revealed a landscape of public education dramatically different from the “indoctrination” alleged in this executive order and “divisive concepts” state legislation. AHA researchers found dedicated history teachers, professionals who are primarily concerned with helping their students learn central elements of our nation’s history. Nearly 100 percent of the teachers surveyed rated “developing informed citizens for participation in a democratic society” 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.

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 “President’s Advisory 1776 Commission”—a panel devoid of experts in the history of the United States—which the OAH characterized in 2020 as a partisan attempt to “restrict historical pedagogy, stifle deliberative discussion, and take us back to an earlier era characterized by a limited vision of the US past.”

The executive order’s 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.

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’s educators as they help students learn how past generations fought to make the United States a “more perfect union,” 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’s most glaring imperfections, they teach our youth resilience, courage, and pride. They also teach them history.

We reject the premise that it is “anti-American” or “subversive” 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’s 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’s foundation. It also includes legacies of contradictions to those principles present at the nation’s founding and beyond. It includes the struggles of Americans across nearly 250 years to enlarge that legacy—to 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.

The AHA and the OAH advocate for the importance of history in American public life and for education that prepares our nation’s 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 to think, rather than what to think.

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Founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the American Historical Association provides leadership for the discipline and promotes the critical role of historical thinking in public life. The Association defends academic freedom, develops professional standards, supports innovative scholarship and teaching, and helps to sustain and enhance the work of historians. As the largest membership association of professional historians in the world (nearly 11,000 members), the AHA serves historians in a wide variety of professions and represents every historical era and geographical area.

About the Organization of American Historians

Founded in 1907, the Organization of American Historians is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history, guided by the principles of advocacy, professional integrity, and advancement of scholarship. An international non-profit organization, the OAH represents historians, who are college and university professors, pre-collegiate teachers, archivists, museum curators, public historians, students, and professional historians working in a variety of institutional settings including national parks and historical societies. The mission of the OAH is to promote excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of U.S. history, to encourage wide discussions of historical questions, and to serve as the leading voice for the equitable treatment of all history practitioners.