My friend got his 6 pack and told me he enjoyed it. Maybe his class was better. My instructor was entertaining but the content was a lot of memorizing lights, signals and rules which differ for international, inland, and western rivers -- and different classes of vessels, and ship sizes. It was also a lot of chart work with parallel rules and dividers (manually calculating speed, set, drift, course and compass correction calcs.). Honestly I haven't used that stuff in about 40 years since I took my US Power Squadron course, and probably won't use it ever again if I have working electronic charting on my iPhone, tablet, laptop or CP.

IMHO - yes it's good to know but if the DOD shuts off GPS, doing manual chart work will be the least of my problems.