Film is dead ... it's a waste of time.
Maybe for the long run, but learning to properly compose photos will be good for my son...give him a chance to learn something outside of the usual 3 Rs.
Not true. Photography should be studied with film before moving to digital. Personally I don't enjoy digital all that much. Just use my canon 10d for casual shooting. For my landscape work I use a compact monorail 4 x 5 and transparency film. Although for printing I do use the digital Chromira printer at the lab.
Film may be dead, but a manual film camera is the best way to learn about photography. You cannot learn about the relationships between ASA, aperture, shutter speed, depth of field, backlighting, etc with a point and shoot digital.