[Ecoed] NewScientist:US Department of Education 'overlooks' evolution

[David Kirschtel]

US Department of Education 'overlooks' evolution
     * 12:28 24 August 2006
     * NewScientist.com news service
     * Celeste Biever

Evolutionary biology is mysteriously missing from the list of  
undergraduate subjects eligible for a US federal grant.

The department of education claims the omission is simply a mistake  
and insists that US students taking evolutionary biology majors are  
eligible for the grants. However, the incident has left pro-evolution  
campaigners wondering whether evolutionary biology was deliberately  
eliminated from the list by people who find Darwinian evolution  
impossible to reconcile with their own religious beliefs.

. . . .

The grants in question are known as National Science and Mathematics  
Access to Retain Talent or SMART grants and are available to  
undergraduates at US universities studying mathematics, science  
technology, engineering and “critical” foreign languages. The DoE is  
offering them for the first time this year in order to encourage  
students “to pursue college majors in high demand in the global  
economy”.

A pdf document on the DoE's website lists the hundreds of eligible  
majors, which include a variety of subjects from Artificial  
Intelligence and Robotics to Conservation Biology to Organic  
Chemistry. But, as this article is published, evolutionary biology is  
conspicuously absent.

article continues at:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9833&print=true