I tried to contact Zed about a month back, to ask him this question.
I tried though his blog comments, and at the help email he has for his HTLXTHW courses, but never got a response.
I dunno if he just never noticed it, or if he's actually ignoring me for some reason, but having already typed out this question with all the necessary context, I figure I may as well post it a public place where it's relevant, so here:
and was pleasantly surprised find you explicitly mentioning Siegfried Engelmann and Direct Instruction.
Here's the story:
I learned about your "Learn X the Hard Way" series through a friend who had learned Python from your course.
He told me he heard you knew about Zig and DI.
I immediately said something like:
> Nah, pretty much nobody has heard about DI, much less properly appreciates it.
> Probably Zed just meant lowercase "direct instruction" in the literal, non-technical sense of "instruction that is somehow relatively "direct"".
> He's probably never heard of uppercase "Direct Instruction" in the technical sense of "working by Engelmann's Theory of Instruction".
But then I googled, and yeah, aforementioned pleasant surprise.
(I am just not going to say anything, outside of these brackets, about "blasdel" there.
If medicine was like education, the entire field would be dominated by the anti-vaxxers.
Hey, blasdel! supporting "Constructivism" is morally at least as bad as supporting anti-vaccination!
Bah, whatever. Okay, got that out of my system. Anyway. xD )
So now I'm really curious:
You said you "learned quite a bit about how to teach effectively from [Zig and Wes]".
But how did you learn from them?
You haven't slogged your way through the "Theory of Instruction: Principles and Applications" text itself, have you?
I have, and wow was that a dense read... Which is frustrating, because as you're reading, you can see, abstractly, how they could've meta-applied the principles they're laying out to teaching the principles themselves --[the open module on Engelmann's work at AthabascaU](http://psych.athabascau.ca/html/387/OpenModules/Engelmann/) includes a small proof-of-concept of that, after all-- but apparently they just didn't feel it was worth the extra work, I guess...?
(Zig did [say that the theory is important for "legitimacy"](http://zigsite.com/video/theory_of_direct_instruction_2009.h...) --ie, having a response in the academic sphere to the damn "Constructivists" with their ridiculous conclusion-jumping-Piaget stuff and so on-- and that's the only practical motivation I've ever heard him express for why they wrote that tome in the first place.)
Have you read any of the stuff he's written for a "popular" audience, like these?:
I tried though his blog comments, and at the help email he has for his HTLXTHW courses, but never got a response.
I dunno if he just never noticed it, or if he's actually ignoring me for some reason, but having already typed out this question with all the necessary context, I figure I may as well post it a public place where it's relevant, so here:
Hi Zed,
So, I found [this comment of yours on HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1484030) by googling:
> site:https://news.ycombinator.com zedshaw engelmann
and was pleasantly surprised find you explicitly mentioning Siegfried Engelmann and Direct Instruction.
Here's the story:
I learned about your "Learn X the Hard Way" series through a friend who had learned Python from your course.
He told me he heard you knew about Zig and DI.
I immediately said something like:
> Nah, pretty much nobody has heard about DI, much less properly appreciates it.
> Probably Zed just meant lowercase "direct instruction" in the literal, non-technical sense of "instruction that is somehow relatively "direct"".
> He's probably never heard of uppercase "Direct Instruction" in the technical sense of "working by Engelmann's Theory of Instruction".
But then I googled, and yeah, aforementioned pleasant surprise.
(I am just not going to say anything, outside of these brackets, about "blasdel" there.
If medicine was like education, the entire field would be dominated by the anti-vaxxers.
Hey, blasdel! supporting "Constructivism" is morally at least as bad as supporting anti-vaccination!
Bah, whatever. Okay, got that out of my system. Anyway. xD )
So now I'm really curious:
You said you "learned quite a bit about how to teach effectively from [Zig and Wes]".
But how did you learn from them?
You haven't slogged your way through the "Theory of Instruction: Principles and Applications" text itself, have you?
I have, and wow was that a dense read... Which is frustrating, because as you're reading, you can see, abstractly, how they could've meta-applied the principles they're laying out to teaching the principles themselves --[the open module on Engelmann's work at AthabascaU](http://psych.athabascau.ca/html/387/OpenModules/Engelmann/) includes a small proof-of-concept of that, after all-- but apparently they just didn't feel it was worth the extra work, I guess...?
(Zig did [say that the theory is important for "legitimacy"](http://zigsite.com/video/theory_of_direct_instruction_2009.h...) --ie, having a response in the academic sphere to the damn "Constructivists" with their ridiculous conclusion-jumping-Piaget stuff and so on-- and that's the only practical motivation I've ever heard him express for why they wrote that tome in the first place.)
Have you read any of the stuff he's written for a "popular" audience, like these?:
- [Could John Stuart Mill Have Saved Our Schools?](http://www.amazon.com/Could-John-Stuart-Saved-Schools-ebook/...)
- [Teaching Needy Kids in Our Backward System](http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Needy-Kids-Backward-System/dp...)
- [War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse](http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Schools-Academic-Child/dp/...)
(god has Zig got a way with picking titles...)
But basically what I really want to ask you, which all that was just to establish context for, is just:
In developing your Python course, how did you use your knowledge of DI?