Why learn the C Language?

Because the C language is like Latin, it is finite and hasn't changed for years. C is tight and spare. and in the current economic climate we will need a host of young people who know C to keep existing critical systems running.
C is built right into the core of linux and unix. The design idea behind Unix was to write an operating system in C so all you needed to port it to a new architecture was a C compiler. Linux is essentially the success story of a series of earlier attempts to make a PC version of Unix.
Students now arriving at college have less knowledge about computing than they did ten years ago as programming is seen too difficult for school to teach. A sensible place is at the beginning and C is as close as most of us will ever need to go unless we are becoming hardware designers. Even for these students to start at C and go further down into the machine is a good idea. C is like having a knife which is dangerous but if you were learning to be a chef you would need one and probably cut yourself and discovering what it can do. Similarly C expects you to know what you are doing and if you don't it won't warn before it crashes.