This thread just goes to show how unreliable someone's words are when they are repeated by someone else:

His teacher claims that XHTML will soon be outdated, a thing of the past, and that tools such as Dreamweaver, Flash etc. will be all that is needed.

It seems that the combination of these two ideas is not what was meant at all. This is what happens when a complex idea is told to one person, who then turns around and tells it to another person.

@billz:
One thing you may want to inform your students, is that the amount of code they end up dealing with, if they end up doing this professionally, will depend a lot on what type of team they end up working with. Few worthwhile projects are pulled together by only one person. There are designers with different sorts of skills, as well as different types of coders or programmers. I've seen coders that only specialize in HTML and CSS, and don't do design at all. They don't make very much money, but they can earn a living. In fact, this is pretty much how I started out.

Tell your students that if they are interested in pursuing this, to figure out what they are good at and enjoy the most, and become an expert it it. But remind them that the more well rounded they are with many skills such as HTML, CSS, or programming languages, the more valuable they will be in the job market.

Although there are many reasons for laypersons that are not in this industry to learn the basics of design, or HTML, those that wish to pursue it professionally need to realize where they fit in the job market so that they may eventually reach senior positions.

I think that we can all agree that HTML code is not about to be "outdated" any time soon. It will progress in version numbers, but WYSIWYG editors will never take over completely, since web-applications will always need to generate HTML dynamically, which will always require hand-coding. As the web becomes more dynamic, not less, the value of hand-coding websites seems to be increasing, not decreasing.

Of course, there will always be people who slam together Wordpress sites or 1 page mini-sites in Dreamweaver, or whatever. I don't think that is specifically wrong, but it's not where the money is career-wise IMO.

Thanks for your input wayfarer07. You raised a a number of very good points. I have been trying to give broad information in my course in order to get across the bigger pitcure. Most of what I teach is about everything that goes into being a good web designer/developer: planning, management, dealing with customers, budgets etc. Half the time it's more imortant how you get along with people at work...

I find it very hard to get across some of the larger concepts and sometimes it's misunderstood, hence this thread. I also find it hard deliver classes to students who are of the most varied backgrounds, ages, experience etc. My current students are the most varied I have ever taught.

I agree with what you said about students finding what they are good at. I try encourage them to explore all aspects of website creation so they at least have an understanding of them. I have one student who has been programming in VB and C. I showed him the basic functions of Flash (he had never used it before) and the next week he had build a spaceship game similar to the old Malestrom. Ask him to design a mock up or a page layout and he wouldn't know where to start!

Thanks again for the thoughts, you have given me some things to ponder.