Enlarge By Jack Plunkett, AP State Board of Education Chairwoman Gail Lowe. USA TODAY OPINION USA TODAY OPINION About Editorials/Debate Opinions expressed in USA TODAY's editorials are decided by its Editorial Board, a demographically and ideologically diverse group that is separate from USA TODAY's news staff. Most editorials are accompanied by an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature that allows readers to reach conclusions based on both sides of an argument rather than just the Editorial Board's point of view.

Jefferson Davis — Mississippi cotton planter, president of the Confederacy and stout defender of slavery — might be a historical footnote to most Americans , but he's about to get a politically inspired boost. A determined majority of the Texas Board of Education is preparing to require that Texas students be taught about Davis, and his discredited view of states' rights, alongside Abraham Lincoln , the Great Emancipator.

OPPOSING VIEW: Teach founding principles

Within a few days, that and hundreds of other proposed changes in standards for teaching social studies in Texas schools, many with a similar ideological bent, are to be formally posted in Austin for public comment. With a 2-1 board majority already behind the changes, most if not all are expected to be adopted at its next meeting, in May.

Because of Texas' massive presence in the textbook market nationwide, the state board's idiosyncratic view of history is likely to show up in what's taught in schools across the USA for the next decade.

Among the other changes in the current draft: Downgrading the place of Thomas Jefferson among the Founders because of board members' dislike of his support for separation of church and state.

In sociology, the review committee that submitted proposed standards to the board suggested study of the impact of cultural movements in art, music and literature such as Tin Pan Alley, the Beat Generation, rock 'n' roll, country-western music and hip-hop. The board majority threw out hip-hop as offensive. Country music survived.

None of the board members setting social studies standards for the coming decade is a historian, but no detail is too small for the board's micromanagement. "Capitalism" is out as a name for the U.S. economic system ("negative connotation," said one member of the majority); the required term will now be "free enterprise system."

That particular change is harmless enough, but this sort of agenda-driven revisionism isn't narrow and isn't confined to Texas. Nearly half the states have a centralized curriculum system, often dominated by a politically elected or appointed board.

Kansas has been tied in knots for a decade over teaching evolution. At the other end of the politically correct spectrum, California regulates the portrayal of genders, minority groups, the elderly and the disabled. According to the Los Angeles Times, publishers have even been discouraged from labeling the residents of poor countries as, well, poor. Negative stereotyping, you know.

Members of the Texas board and their backers say they're just trying to restore balance to an academic system they view as skewed to the left. But that misses the point. Standards should be set by professionals in their fields. They should not be a vehicle for scoring points in the culture wars.

Texas' impact on education nationally should decline as computerized publishing makes it easier and less costly to tailor texts for individual markets. But why should students in Texas, or anywhere, have their education warped by political and ideological gamesmanship?