While I was a department chairman at school I made the case that traditional, wet-darkroom photography was fundamentally different in teaching process, a valuable tool to get through to students and fundamentally unlike sitting down and moving an object the size of a bar of soap around on a table while looking at a screen. The counter argument, that computer skills were more important for the real world, was easily accepted and then dismissed because of the ubiquitous nature of computer use across the curriculum. The art studio, and the darkroom in particular, encouraged a very different approach to skill building, a much more integrated, physical interaction with the task at hand. The school bought what I was selling and continues to maintain a wet darkroom as well as a thriving digital program. My successor has added platinum printing and a host of hybrid process methods, but you have to do the darkroom course first.
As the head of a photographic society that receives many donations from collections dispersed after collectors stop collecting (most die holding that last camera in their cooling hands and the spouse says "what am I going to do with all this stuff?"), I find that the most common request for cameras comes from local high school teachers and the occasional college instructor, looking to keep wet darkroom learning alive in their schools. Getting cameras into the hands of kids is the most important thing we can do to keep film photography alive.
