If you can find the time to learn, manual fire starting is one of the most satisfying skills one can pick up. I learned last summer and I can't even describe how awesome it felt to get those first little embers glowing, and coax them into a full-blown fiery existence. I felt connected with all of nature and my ancestors for just a brief second. Like being catapulted back thousands of years. I am Human, I make fire! Just a deeply moving experience. Perhaps not the most practical thing to know, but moving.
As a lifelong urbanite, I have always thought that moving out of cities and closer to nature is an aspiration that most people around the world tend to share as they get older. Well... I just got married last week at 24 and I must say that tying the knot with the love of my life has already changed my perspective on things and I already find myself longing for the countryside and wilderness more than ever before.
Man, I know you're kidding (at least a bit), but in the past few weeks I've had so many conversations with students who have told me that they've been learning nothing until I broke it down into an (extensively) itemized format. So many students expect to feel like they know that they've learned something by the end of their designated learning period-- and rightly so, but all too often, people are just black holes of consumption and (TRIGGER WARNING [you fuck faces]) mental retardation. "He didn't give me Enlightenment and Perfect English. Bro, this guy sucks, Bro" (rough translation, of course).
Anyway, it is totally possible that you could learn more than grades 1-5 from a book, movie or whatever, but a teacher really has no control beyond a certain point of what a given student will take away from the learning experience. It would be awesome if it were like IT. "Update Adobe Reader, Y/N?"
I wasn't kidding. I mean, yeah, I get you, but for the record I wasn't kidding. My Side of the Mountain was the first book I read that defined freedom in any way that a child could grasp. Incredible lesson, possibly the most important I've ever learned. On the flip side, I did learn a little bit in grade school, but most of it was about interacting with people I loathed. Also meaningful, but not on the same level.
EDIT: ditto this, which is also about runaways, though less so and without the realistic and thus amazing nature angle.
Whenever I see such videos, I always have a doubt. 'how difficult is it really to create fire?' I mean, I am not saying it is easy or extremely difficult, but actually want to know the difficulty I will face in making a fire if I am in a weird position stranded in some wilderness
I just watched all of his videos. They are absolutely awesome! I'd love to have a place where I could try and do this type of thing. But my life has become so urban, there's literally nowhere for hundreds of miles where I could do this without being noticed. Maybe it's time to reconsider my life and move to the Australian outback. Haha.