> > We live in a society fuelled by instant gratification and disposable > everything. We need children today who will want to know how things work.
There, in brief, is the nub of it. You can't teach anybody who doesn't want to learn. Trying to teach photography to a room full of children by taking them away from the familiar environment of their computer is about as good an idea as teaching swimming by throwing kids into the deep end of the pool. Start off by showing how to improve the images they are familiar with. Composition and timing can be taught even using a cellphone camera. If you can get them interested, then discussing further techniques (which could include at least a field trip to a conventional darkroom) lets you pace the material to the interest level of the students. Teaching techniques that would be suitable for an elective course at a fine arts college aren't necessarly the best at high school. The course should be of interest (and value) to everybody in the classroom, not just to one or two students.
