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Niels Hoven 🐮 Profile picture
Niels Hoven 🐮
@NielsHoven
Father of 4. Founder of @MentavaInc to accelerate K12 education. We teach preschoolers to read. I post about supporting high-achieving kids
Aug 19 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
Alphabet books teach reading wrong. They’re based on an outdated understanding of English and have barely changed in the last 500 years. So we wrote one that does it right, and we’ve made it available for free. (link in next tweet)

Here’s what makes ours different.
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Image There are 44 sounds in the English language. Half of English sounds are written with more than one letter and alphabet books just ignore them. Can you imagine being a kid, trying to learn a language but only being taught half the sounds? Image
Jul 21 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Parent don’t realize that reading became politicized in the 1990’s and as a result most schools teach it wrong. Teaching kids to guess at words, to rely on pictures, and other bad habits are standard teaching practice for schools now
Image This is a training video for teachers, demonstrating how to teach kids to “read” by guessing at words they can’t even see
Jun 12 • 22 tweets • 8 min read
I've tried all the top reading apps, including ABC Mouse, Duolingo ABC, HOMER, Hooked on Phonics, Khan Academy Kids, and Reading Raven.

I was shocked.

I left the gaming industry bc I started to feel like a drug dealer. But I never sold drugs by marketing them as health food.
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Image These companies market their apps by saying “we make learning fun” but they’re just low-quality games masquerading as education. They’re full of jigsaw puzzles, sticker books, drawing games, and tons of videos designed to turn kids into passive consumers of cheap edutainment.
Jun 1 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
I would like to discredit the entire field of education research by creating a compendium of popular and widely-cited results and showing how shoddy the underlying research is

Please point me to studies that I should look into.

I'll list a few that I'm already aware of below The claim that grouping students by ability has no impact. The study split students by ability but didn't vary the curriculum between groups.
Apr 1 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Seattle Public Schools replaced their gifted program with an "equity-driven STEM program", claiming gifted kids will be supported in regular classes.

These construction paper houses are a showcase “engineering project” from the new program

This is a school of 6th-12th graders
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Image The “Technology Access Foundation” (TAF) program replaced Washington Middle School’s Highly Capable Cohort (HCC), ending the classes that offered advanced curriculum to high-achieving students, and instead requiring them to return to general education classrooms.
Oct 6, 2023 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
When I tell parents that we teach 2- and 3-year-olds to read, they get excited.

Often they ask me “My child isn’t 2 yet, what should I be doing to get ready?”

My answer surprises them: If you want to accelerate your child's education, the most important skill you can teach is the ability to make a mistake.
Sep 28, 2023 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
I finished calculus in 8th grade. Many other kids could do the same but they were never given the opportunity.

This is how my parents beat the system to make sure I always had the opportunity to learn.

Thanks, mom and dad! I’m not sure exactly when my dad realized that our education system is actively hostile to fast learners, but thankfully he realized it early on, and he was determined not to let it hold me back.