Why do we learn science?

I got a few answers to this question. I think that the whole point of school is to open up careers to their students. Whatever the students find interesting, they pursue it. Science is taught because there is and always will be a huge amount of career opportunities based on science. For those who want a job in science, they will need to become specialists in an area.

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Obviously, learning science would be pretty important if you were to choose a scientific career. Science would be the most important and useful to these people. However, science is also useful to those who aren't pursuing a scientific career and is still worth learning. Science helps you understand the world around you. It makes it all clearer. If you see a firework going off, you can think, wow, I know how it works. I like Madelyn's blog on how science is useful to those who aren't looking for science to be the center of their life. She says that knowing basic science keeps us safe. I agree with that. If we didn't know about conductors of electricity, we might go hide up against a metal fence during a thunderstorm and get shocked to death or go try to call our family on a public phone during a storm.

If we didn't know chemical properties of substances, we couldn't know if it is flammable or not. It would take a while to light limestone on fire. In natural science, you could learn that threatened skunks will go through an elaborate routine of hisses and foot stamping and tail-high threat postures before resorting to the spray. This could be pretty useful if you are in a park and you happen to see a skunk hissing at you. If you didn't know any better, you'd probably try to go pet that cute little skunk.

Basically, science helps you understand the world better, avoid hazards, and get through life easier.