I have taught many-a-friend (mostly females) to drive a stick (a few of them I have also taught heel and toe). I have a pretty fool proof mehtod for learning. The biggest issue is starting out, as stated before. Get a car with a stick and have someone who knows how to drive a stick drive it to a big open parking lot (or equivalent. Practice starting and stopping WITHOUT using the throttle. Once you can master starting a manual transmission without using the throttle, you will be ok.
You should practice driving the car around and shifting from first to second and starting and stopping ALL without using the throttle. Basically you are learning to use the clutch. Once you feel comfortable with that, you can start adding a little throttle to get some speed.
SAGE ADVICE: DO NOT REST YOUR FOOT ON THE CLUTCH. ONCE THE CAR IS ROLLING REMOVE YOUR FOOT FROM THE PEDAL. You WILL toast your clutch in quick order in a race if you rest your foot on the clutch pedal.
Once this is down, you can learn rev-matching, heel/toe, and double clutching. But those are in my advanced course.