Image Makers
There are many elements that contribute to a child's success as an image maker. Image making is a natural and valued creative process, and many students have already achieved a high level of visual literacy by the time they reach high school. Young people who apply themselves to a creative medium such as photography, film, graphic design, animation, etc., will surely make an impact in the visual language of the modern world.
As a Media Arts teacher I have been observing my students interact with imaging technology throughout the first decade of this 21st Century. With photography, I tend to offer my students the option of continually exploring more traditional older processes, or contemporary digital imaging, or a mixture of both. While most high school students like to experience the alchemical processes of darkroom photography, they are often already quite advanced in producing a highly "machined" image with their own digital cameras and computers.
Interestingly, I have taught many students who much preferred traditional silver processes and generally avoided computers until they reached their final years of high school. These same students, when they made a decision to work with computers, easily adapted to digital technology and quickly excelled to achieve outstanding results with their computer enhanced imagery.
While it makes perfect sense that photographic work in the old silver nitrate process is an excellent background for success with contemporary digital processes - I have repeatedly observed students who came late to the digital manipulation of forms become highly successful in the medium. It would seem the careful processing demanded of image makers working with traditional light sensitive materials complements their future work with digital technology.