Owen_Richardson

Re-edited to remove/integrate much of the added notes - Sep 5th: This is a long post, and it was a first attempt to simply start trying to explain the whole topic, and see what kind of mistakes I made in the communication. I did indeed make many mistakes, and started to feel that I should ask people not to read this original attempt at first, and so posted added notes to the beginning to say so and try to clear up the worst confusions. But now that my audience is starting to close the inferential gap themselves thanks to amazingly wonderful people like Misha with “What Direct Instruction Is”, I think important points that I tried to express in this original foray might start to become more transparent to that audience. It's still a very long post, with lots of new terminology, and, as Alicorn said, “sales-y enthusiasm'. If you do read it, I must ask that you please don't skim, giving me the benefit of a doubt that anything confusing or nonsensical seeming might actually be something that's important and meaningful in some non-obvious way that you do not yet understand, and that some of the 'sales-y enthusiasm' and “applause lights” may be have been intended to serve some useful purpose. Again, please don't skim (although it is completely my fault if you feel like skimming!), because I just don't know how to do any better until I get more feedback on how the complete whole of what I wrote is understood. If you do start skimming, and give up, just tell me where you did so. [The “added notes” from the first edit I've removed, and will go through at a later time to extract anything that was original and useful and integrate it into the post itself or whatever.] Thank you. Begin original: In this post, I'm going to introduce Direct Instruction, or DI (pronounced Dee-Eye, capital D, capital I, accept no imitations). DI is essentially the theory of how to find the best way to teach anything to anyone. And I mean a theory in the true scientific sense: par