Advancing Science for 150 Years

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To help celebrate their 150th anniversary, the American Association for the Advancement of Science asked New Jersey high school students what they thought about science and society. We've brought you a sampling of their comments. . .

• Most people think of science as something they have to learn to get through school. It isn't very important, just facts that they have to know to pass tests. These people miss the whole point of science. Science is about understanding the world around us and understanding ourselves.
  
• Science makes me question things that I know and keeps me from accepting anything simply because I am told it is the truth.
  
• Science changes our lives by showing us the order of the natural world, and through that, its beauty.
  
• The simple words of great men--Kepler, Newton--gave me the hope nothing else can. This is my sanctuary. By learning their thinking, I tell myself, I can shape my mind into a powerful tool.
  
• Science is not some great, omniscient power, nor is it miraculously revealed to man by me. It comes from within man--the more we understand ourselves, the more science will progress. And since society is a direct product of man, it too will move forward, or sideways, or diagonally for that matter.
  
• Science can either help society in an important way, or it can destroy society.
  
• Science is the 4-year pursuit of knowledge that every high school teenager must live through.
  
• Science, in a way, keeps our society from falling apart.
  
• When most people think of science, they think of it as a laboratory, white coats, and mixing all different-colored chemicals until something blows up. But the fact is that science is a way of life and our future.
  
• Lifetime upon lifetime could be filled with the things I want to accomplish, and for me, science is my vehicle.
  
  
  For more information, visit these Web sites
  
  Science
  http://www.sciencemag.org
  
  American Association for the Advancement of Science
  http://www.aaas.org
  
  

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