A friend of mine was in the class discribed in the story and you might find the details interesting. It happened in Washington state and it rained and was foggy all week long, the worst possible fire making conditions, but they weren't there to learn bow drill. Bow drill is a standard class skill and he expects you to know it for advanced class so he can spend time on new skills. If the student wants a fire their expected to make it on their own , but in this situation they really didn't need a fire. And at the end of the week Tom showed them were to get perfect materials and they started fires ,no problem. In fact they had walked by the perfect materials at least a hundred times.If they had had took to heart what TB had said about skills, nature providing and awareness they would have had fire the first day. Instead they thought fire was impossible under those conditions and didn't push past their percieved limitations. I personlly think their are several priceless lessons in what he taught them and TB only spent mabe 20 minites of class on it and the class was only out a little discomfort. By the way I agree with you if I paid to learn bow drill and didn't get it I'd want my money back too, but that wasn't the case in this situation, infact the students still talk fondly about their experience although they grumbled like #$%& at the time.