Reading is Racist Now, Apparently - American Kids Literally Can’t Read Anymore

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Reading is Racist Now, Apparently – American Kids Literally Can’t Read Anymore"

The Isabel Brown Show – December 10, 2025
Host: Isabel Brown (The Daily Wire) | Guest: Niels Hoven (Founder/CEO, Mentava)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Isabel Brown tackles the alarming crisis of literacy in America, spotlighting how controversial shifts in teaching methods and educational ideology have contributed to catastrophic reading outcomes for children. Isabel, joined by her husband Brock and guest Niels Hoven, explores the roots of the “phonics is racist” argument, exposes the shortcomings of ‘balanced literacy,’ and champions innovative solutions emerging outside the traditional education establishment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Crisis in American Literacy: The Shocking Numbers

• Dismal Reading Proficiency:
  • “By 2025, less than 1/3 of current 4th graders read at a proficient grade level... nearly half of fourth-grade students perform below the basic reading level, aka they just straight up can't read.”
    — Isabel Brown [02:37]
• Personal Anecdotes:
  • Isabel and Brock both reflect on their strong views regarding public schools, referencing personal stories and their experiences with learning to read (Bob Books, family encouragement).
    — [01:23–05:29]

2. Phonics vs. ‘Balanced Literacy’: The Roots of the Debate

• How Reading Used To Be Taught:
  • Sounding out letters and building words (phonics) was foundational in Isabel’s and most millennial childhoods.
  • Isabel credits early phonics (like Bob Books) for her lifelong love of reading.
• What’s Changed: ‘Picture Power’ and Guessing Games:
  • Many schools now teach children to memorize words via images instead of sounding them out — a result of ‘balanced literacy.’
  • Isabel plays a classroom clip where a teacher openly discourages sounding out words, opting instead for image association (e.g., identify “butterfly” from a picture instead of reading the word).
    — [08:33–10:12]
• Critique of the New Method:
  • “I could never just blanket memorize hundreds of thousands of words... What's the building block behind any of that?”
    — Isabel Brown [10:36–11:20]
  • Brock references pop culture, likening the approach to memorizing words without understanding, which can lead to fundamental knowledge gaps.
    — [11:07]

3. The ‘Phonics is Racist’ Controversy

• Academic Claims:
  • Isabel cites Minnesota State University’s assertion that phonics is rooted in the Jim Crow era and reinforces “white standard English.”
    — [15:16–15:56]
• Guest’s Response:
  • “Somehow the idea that words are made up of letter sounds has become this culture war topic inside education... Yesterday was the first time I'd seen anyone saying not only should we not teach kids to sound out words, but that this is racist because it came from the Jim Crow era. But apparently that is what they think at the University of Minnesota's literacy faculty.”
    — Niels Hoven [16:13]

4. Origins and Problems of ‘Balanced Literacy’

• Why Did Schools Move Away from Phonics?
  • Around the 1990s, the trend shifted toward fostering a “love of reading” and having children guess words from pictures and context.
  • Niels shares that this widespread adoption has led to a generation’s worth of students struggling with basic reading.
  • “Balanced literacy” became a compromise between phonics and whole-word/memorization methods, but often leaves kids without mastery of either.
    — [17:35–18:47]

5. Innovative Solutions: Spotlight on Mentava

• Introducing Niels Hoven and Mentava:
  • Early literacy software using a phonics-based approach that can take a child from no knowledge of letters to reading early reader books.
  • Designed as a software-based tutor to close gaps when great teachers or literacy environments aren’t available.
    — [14:45–15:16], [24:14]
• Results:
  • “We’re getting kids as young as two up to a second grade reading level in as short as three months... Most kids take maybe six months.”
    — Niels Hoven [24:14]

6. Systemic Issues in Education

• Shift from Education to Equalization:
  • Niels expresses concern that schools now focus more on equalizing outcomes than individual learning, leading to fewer opportunities for gifted or struggling students alike.
  • “Schools have become about equalization rather than education... how do we artificially engineer equal outcomes rather than giving kids equal opportunity?”
    — Niels Hoven [24:14]
• Decline of Parent Involvement and Rise of Hostility:
  • Isabel laments the growing alienation of parents from their children’s education.
    — [34:12]
  • Niels and Isabel discuss backlash from academia against “non-credentialed” innovators and the resistance to acknowledging results-focused solutions.
    — [28:07–30:57]

7. Homeschooling and Parental Empowerment

• Homeschool Movement Rising:
  • Isabel reveals that well over 10% of American families are actively starting to homeschool, crediting increased awareness of education system shortcomings post-Covid.
    — [38:29]
  • Shares her own family’s hesitancy and changing perspective on homeschooling.
• Encouragement and Accessibility:
  • “You can be empowered. You can do this yourself. Find the tool that works best for your family.”
    — Niels Hoven [37:42]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Scope of the Crisis:

  • “75% of fourth graders in America literally can’t read at grade level.”
    — Isabel Brown [02:59]

• On the New ‘Reading’ Methods:

  • “Instead of sounding out those letters, what they are trying to get your kids to do is... basically just memorize that those two things mean the same thing.”
    — Isabel Brown [09:11]

• On Academic Pushback:

  • “There’s an education PhD out of Australia who said... ‘You are never going to convince me that efficacy should be the driver of education.’”
    — Niels Hoven [30:05]

• On Teaching and Parental Authority:

  • “My dad made a comment to me…they never even remotely considered homeschooling...because they genuinely bought into the narrative that they were too stupid to educate their own kids.”
    — Isabel Brown [38:29]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:02–02:59: Crisis in reading proficiency, personal stories about education
• 03:31–05:29: Importance of phonics and family encouragement
• 06:22–07:15: Phonics branded as ‘racist’ by academic ideologues
• 08:33–10:12: 'Balanced literacy' classroom example & critique
• 14:45–16:42: Introduction to Niels Hoven & the Mentava platform
• 16:13–18:47: Academic arguments against phonics; history & ideology
• 24:14–26:54: Decline of ability-grouping, shift from education to equalization
• 28:07–30:57: Institutional resistance & academic elitism
• 34:12–37:04: Parental empowerment, Mentava’s model, homeschooling trends
• 38:29–End: Affirmation of parent agency and encouragement for families

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Final Thoughts

This episode sharply interrogates what Isabel describes as a “gaslighting” of parents and communities by entrenched education bureaucracies and unions—a system that now often shames time-tested methods like phonics as ideological offenses. The conversation is equal parts exposé, encouragement, and call-to-action, urging parents to question authority, trust their instincts, and reclaim the right to guide their children’s learning using proven, accessible strategies.

The tone is unapologetically direct and at times passionate, mixing humor, pop culture references, and pointed critiques of the education establishment. The episode is a rallying cry for educational pluralism, parental involvement, and a return to foundational skills.

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For more information:

• Mentava: mentava.com
• [Isabel Brown on Instagram, Twitter, and The Daily Wire]

Transcript

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[Isabel Brown]

It has come to my attention that kids literally just can't read in America now. I guess I shouldn't even remotely be surprised because of how bad education has gotten, especially post Covid in our country. And maybe it's because I don't have kids that are actively going to school right now. Although, let's be honest, my kids will probably never set foot in an actual school.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

They're going to be homeschooled, certainly not a government school. Fun little side note story for you. When my husband and I were doing.

[Isabel Brown]

Our marriage preparation classes through the Catholic church, which is called Pre Cana, we had to do this whole weekend retreat thing where we were talking about all of the big things and the big.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Decision making that goes into marriage. And they separated the men and the.

[Isabel Brown]

Women for the afternoon. And we had to do this like, workbook thing where we answered a bunch of questions about finances and household responsibilities and raising children, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the questions that they asked you is, how do you plan on educating our children?

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

And then we all came back together with our spouse to be and we read all of the answers together and it was like a good maybe we.

[Isabel Brown]

Didn'T think about this. And these are the types of things.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

That we need to talk about exercise going into marriage. And my husband Brock had written in his workbook, government schools are indoctrination camps designed to poison the mind of children. And my kids will never set foot in a public school.

[Isabel Brown]

And I looked at him and I.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Said, and that, babe, is why we're getting married.

[Isabel Brown]

Anyway, side Note story over. Maybe it's because I don't have a child that I'm currently teaching how to read actively. My daughter is seven months old. But I didn't realize just how bad reading standards have become in America and.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Maybe I should say lack thereof of.

[Isabel Brown]

Reading standards because it turns out now by 2025, less than 1/3 less than 1/3 of current 4th graders were read at a proficient grade level for 4th graders. So 75% plus.

Of our current 4th graders literally can't read at grade level. Then you even factor in an extra layer of all of this. 40%, nearly half of fourth grade students perform below the basic reading level, aka the nearly half of fourth graders in our country just straight up can't read.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

It's giving New girl Nick Miller. I'm not convinced I know how to read. I think I've just memorized a bunch of different words and I saw this.

[Isabel Brown]

And I was completely floored. So decided to do a little bit more digging. And it turns out one of the primary reasons that kids cannot read today is that they are systematically being told not to learn how to read. The way that we learned how to read, if you were growing up in the 90s or early 2000s, was used through a process called phonics. I don't know if you guys remember having to learn phonics in school. I went to a Montessori school for most of my education in my elementary school years, so it was a little bit of a different curriculum. But I do specifically remember learning phonics. And that is the connection between the sound that a letter makes or a certain series of letter makes and the word and putting together those sounds, sounding out words as you are reading that word on a piece of paper. My clearest memories of phonics growing up came along with BOB books. I don't know if you guys remember.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

The boxed series of BOB books. In fact, as of today, I am ordering a massive set of those tonight because they are probably going to be outlawed by teachers unions in about five minutes.

[Isabel Brown]

The entire concept of BOB books was that there were little three letter words over and over and over again in these books, like pet the cat or.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Mat on bat or something like that.

[Isabel Brown]

And you literally had to sound out every single letter, put them all together and that's how you learned how to read. Because I was introduced to those at a really early level. I taught myself how to read when I was about four or five years old using these BOB books. And reading was by far and away my biggest passion and hobby. As a kid, as a result of that, every family road trip, I had my nose in a book. I was tuning out the entire world. I, I read everything ferociously and just had to consume as much of it as I possibly could. My mom totally encouraged my love of reading. When I was growing up, we read books aloud, sure, but most of the time I was just head into a chapter book at all times my entire childhood. In fact, one of my favorite memories with my mom was in fifth grade when the last Harry Potter book came out. And my sweet mom, who did not.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

At all remotely share my affinity for.

[Isabel Brown]

Harry Potter, but loved fostering her daughter's love of reading, woke up at like 2am to go stand in line at the grocery store because our small hometown didn't have a true bookstore that was about 30 minutes away. She stood in line at the grocery.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Store at like 2 in the morning to buy me the Harry Potter book as it came out. And around 5am she came down to my room, tossed the gigantic like 800 page book, which I still have, upstairs into my bed and said, here you go. And I finished the book literally later that day. It was the greatest day of my life.

[Isabel Brown]

Truly, truly one of my favorite memories. But kids now are not learning that process, either self taught or through guided teaching by their teachers, or in an environment of a classroom, in a learning setting to sound out those letters to then form words. So you're not looking at the word dog and hearing D.

That it turns out may in fact be racist. Apparently, because everything is racist now in America. You know, they said years ago that 2/2 equals 4 is a white supremacist statement. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised that duh G is now apparently also racist in the American education system. But the teachers unions and the institutions, the colleges that are teaching teachers are trying to make the argument that phonics, the process of sounding out words, is in fact a tool from the era of Jim Crow and, and is reinforcing white standard English. I guess black people and brown people and white people all speak different variations.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Of English, at least according to our.

[Isabel Brown]

Colleges and universities in our ridiculously broken education system in the United States of America. And those that are trying to find a solution to this, seeing that we are not teaching kids to read, we are teaching kids instead to memorize words. And we'll get into that in a second. Those that are trying to find solutions to it are being completely demonized as these horrible capitalists trying to capitalize off of your children so that they are starting Businesses to teach them how to read. In reality, they are true innovators and actually providing the single greatest public service to our society of all time, which is trying to keep reading alive. Literacy, basic literacy alive in 2025 in America. We're going to have one of those experts on the show today to talk about his company and what he founded to bring back phonics to American education again. But before we do that, I want to show you what they are telling students to do instead. Because this genuinely shocked me, and I cannot for the life of me begin to understand how this would even work. Instead of sounding out words, in fact, kids are being actively encouraged not to sound out words. Look at this clip of a teacher telling a student to do just that.

Why are you doing that? Quit doing that. Quit. You can't sound out the. I don't know why you started doing that.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Quit doing that.

[Isabel Brown]

Quit.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

I don't know why you're doing that. I can't believe you're sounding out letters. That's so insane, little boy. As I'm trying to teach you that.

[Isabel Brown]

Instead of sounding out those letters, what they are trying to get your kids to do is. I don't even know what the terminology for this is. I think it's called, like, picture memorization or like, picture magic or something. Whatever they're calling it in the public school system, they want you to. Let's say we're talking about the word butterfly. Look at a picture of a butterfly, then look at the word butterfly and.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Basically just memorize that those two things.

[Isabel Brown]

Mean, mean the same thing. There are how many hundreds of thousands of words in the English language? I have no idea how blanket memorization is supposed to work here, but here's an example of what this is supposed to look like in the classroom. Oh, here we go. I believe this term is called balanced literacy.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Just looking at pictures to memorize words. This is insane.

[Teacher (Balanced Literacy Clip)]

We began reading the sight words together until we came to an unknown word which was actually covered up. I covered up the picture right here, too. Oh, my gosh. Some friends are thinking that it's butterfly, and maybe that's because I didn't cover up the picture well enough. You are already using your picture power. When I turn it over, there's a butterfly there. So my guess. My guess is that that word's going to be butterfly. I'm going to look and check to see if I'm right.

Look at that. It starts with the B, B, B. So let's read it together. Look at the butterfly with common core Children should be reading and analyzing text from the time they enter school.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

This is bonkers crazy to me. I don't think I, even with all.

[Isabel Brown]

Of my love of reading, could have ever just blanket memorized hundreds of thousands of words. What's the show?

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Dang it.

[Isabel Brown]

There is a show.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Oh, it's how I met your mother where they give Ted such a hard time because he never actually learned the word chameleon. He had never seen it spelled out.

[Isabel Brown]

There was a whole episode at one point of things that they had gaps.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

In learning about and basically making the.

[Isabel Brown]

Claim that every adult has something that they have a learning gap about that they somehow just never learned how to do. Maybe that was laundry and. Or riding a bike.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

And in Ted Mosby's case, in how I met your mother, he pronounces the word chameleon when he reads it for the first time as Chama Leon. That's what I feel like would be happening when you're just blanket memorizing a.

[Isabel Brown]

Bunch of random words and you never learned how to actually sound them out again, it's giving Nick Miller. I never learned how to read. I just memorized a whole bunch of different words. So although the education system is, of course forced through the teachers unions and just disgusting corrupt bureaucracy in the public school system trying to gaslight you even further and say, no, no, no, this is the answer. Sure, like, 75% of fourth graders in our country just can't read, I guess. But this is the answer. Because if we teach kids to sound out words, you're a racist and a white supremacist and probably an agent of Hitler youth Nazism making a comeback in America today. Back to how we can empower our kids to learn how to read in just a second. But first, one of the most common questions that I am getting from other parents who watch the show or interact with our content right now is how we can keep older kids, teenagers, safe on social media as they navigate all of the important content that is out there. The truth is, protecting teens online as they navigate social media is something that we can stay ahead of together. And as a new mom myself, I feel that responsibility so, so deeply. Now, as my daughter Isla grows up, I want to feel empowered to make sure that she's being safe and responsible online, which won't be for a very.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Long time, thank goodness.

[Isabel Brown]

But last year, Instagram became one of the very first platforms to really take this seriously by launching something called Teen accounts. These accounts automatically limit who can contact our children and what type of content they are exposed to. They designed this reimagined experience with parents hearts in mind to support you and to bring us all a whole lot more peace of mind. Nearly 95% of parents say that these default protections have helped to keep their teens so much safer online and that more than anything, means everything to parents. Setting thoughtful digital boundaries isn't about fear. It's about showing your teenagers that their safety and their innocence matter deeply to you. When parents like you and I safeguard the spaces that they explore, we're building a foundation of trust and teaching them that they deserve to grow up feeling secure, loved and protected. That's why I am so grateful that Instagram is taking these important and proactive steps in online safety and and you can learn more about this incredibly important work [e-mail] teen accounts there are, by the grace of God, incredible innovators and good Samaritans like our guest today who are creating companies and new solutions that parents can use and can be incorporated into the education system to revive phonics again. I am so so excited to be joined by our friend Niels Hoven who is the founder and CEO of Mentava. This is such an incredible platform and especially as families like myself are considering homeschooling our children and what that's going to look like when it comes to the day to day teaching tools and the curriculum building blocks that we can use with our kids to help them become advanced learners not settling for mediocrity that we see in the school system. I cannot wait to learn more about Mental today, so please join me in welcoming our friend Niels to the show. Thank you so so much for joining us on the show today. I'm so excited for our audience to hear more about your solution to the plummeting literacy rates that are happening in America in 2025. Which sounds insane for me to even be saying that on the show today, but sadly is where we are at. So if you really quick can give us a quick overview into what Mental is and why you decided to pursue this as a passion, we would love to hear it.

[Niels Hoven]

Sure. So I'm Nils, I'm the founder of Mentala and Mental is Early Literacy Software. Essentially what we've done is we've taken traditional phonics teaching kids the sounds of the letters and how to smush them together to make words and we package those up in essentially a software based tutor so that even a kid who doesn't have access to a great teacher can learn to sound out words through our phonics software. And we take kids from knowing no letters at all to being able to read easy reader books like Green Green eggs and ham, Dr. Seuss, elephant and Biggie Piggy, things like that.

[Isabel Brown]

So important. But it's interesting you say that word phonics, because we have just discovered that phonics are apparently racist.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

I have never heard this before in all of my years in political podcasting.

[Isabel Brown]

But you tweeted something literally yesterday about this, that the University of Minnesota, or, sorry, Minnesota State University, and many other colleges and universities across the country are saying that phonics and the promotion of teaching kids how to sound out letters to make words was developed during the Jim Crow era. You shared this sentence from Minnesota State's College of Education.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

In this given historical moment, as we're.

[Isabel Brown]

Seeking racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd's murder, basically we need to throw phonics out the window and teach kids instead how to memorize words. Where is this coming from? And is there any sort of legitimacy to this claim whatsoever?

[Niels Hoven]

It is crazy. Somehow the idea that words are made up of letter sounds has become this culture. We're topic inside education. And for a generation, educators have been debating whether or not to teach kids to read by sounding out words. And not until yesterday seen the idea that we should not be teaching kids to sound out words because that strategy can't from the Jim Crow era. But apparently that is what they think at the University of Minnesota's literacy literacy faculty.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

This is genuinely insane to me, truly.

[Isabel Brown]

Because I didn't realize there was another.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Way to learn how to read other than my experience of reading Bob books and these early reader books of sounding.

[Isabel Brown]

Out duh, oh, go or cut to learn all of these things. But now teachers are promoting this new philosophy called, I think it's basic literacy or, or fundamentals of literacy. I, I have to go back to the, the terminology here, but the new method of all of this is just basically look at a picture of something. If you're looking at a picture of a butterfly and look at the, the word butterfly, you're supposed to link those two things in your mind, and that's how kids will memorize how to read. What is the building block, substantiation behind any of that, if there is any. And why do you think that's correlating to the number of students that are rising that can't read at basic grade level?

[Niels Hoven]

Right. So the nice thing is that we are actually starting to see the pendulum swing back, which is why you see places like Minnesota State University pushing back against this idea that we should go back to what worked in the old days. But this idea that we should be moving away from phonics started to get popular around.

The 90s. And the idea was essentially that instead of teaching kids every letter of sound, how about we just teach foster a love of reading. How about we just teach them to recognize words, allow them to look at all the context clues like the pictures around. There's actually a video out there of a teacher training other teachers how to teach kids. And.

There'S a word up on her whiteboard and it's covered by a sticky note so the kids can't see it. And she's asking the kids, how do you read the note? How do you read the word under the sticky note? And the answer is there's a picture next to it of a butterfly. And they say, oh, that's probably butterfly under the sticky note. And she says, oh, that's wonderful, you're reading. And so this is what a large number of our schools have been teaching our kids for the past generation. And we are finally starting to see that pendulum swing back towards teaching kids letter sounds and how to blend them together again. But it's not happening as quickly as we'd like to.

[Isabel Brown]

Helping to support our kids is so much bigger than just education. A ton of it has to do with safeguarding their health too. And I can tell you in our house, there's a lot going on. There's multiple people coming to work at our house every day. We have corgi glitter, aka mounds of.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Dog hair, like literally everywhere with every five seconds.

[Isabel Brown]

The weather is constantly changing here in Washington D.C. and so there's all different kinds of pollutants interacting with our airspace. And we are so, so grateful to now have a rabbit air purifier right in the heart of our home where we spend the vast majority of our time. Ever since we brought it into our family life experience. I can already tell the difference in air quality that I am breathing every day, certainly that my baby is breathing every day. And I 100,000% would recommend this product to any other young family that's constantly dealing with different pollutants in their environment every single day, day in and day out. The Rabbit Air A3 purifier features an advanced multi layer six stage filtration system that, that uses HEPA, HEPA technology and a dual hive deodorization filter to trap dust and odors and a wide range of airborne pollutants, ensuring that there is a thorough cleaning of your indoor air in your house. Or whatever environment you plug it into. Pet owners in particular, just like myself.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

With our Corgi Glitter Extraordinaire house here.

[Isabel Brown]

Can select a specialized pet allergy filter option. This filter is specifically designed to trap and reduce common household pet allergens like dander and reduce any associated pet odors that may be floating around in your house. It is equipped with a laser particle sensor that automatically adjusts the cleaning power to ensure a continuous optimal air quality. And the unit operates whisper quiet, which with a baby actually means a whole lot for undisturbed use, features a light sensor to disable blue light for better sleep and offers full control via the Rabbit Air app. It's backed by a five year warranty and and you can learn more about how to incorporate this type of clean air into your house that will truly be a game changer for your family@rabbit air.com or call them 24. 7 to speak to a Rabbit Air consultant. Okay, this is genuinely insane to me. Like that's not actual reading at all. That's just looking at a picture and saying what the picture is. A large proponents cohort of all of these people trying to push towards balanced literacy. Literacy, that's the terminology I forgot there for a second, is really trying to make the argument that learning how to read is basically the same as learning how to talk. I am a new parent. My child is seven months old. She's just now learning the new words and phrases concept of life. And she can say one, maybe two words right now, but can make a whole lot of sounds. And it's obvious to me that a baby learning how to talk is a fundamentally different journey than learning how to read because it's based in mimicking what you're seeing around you. It's a repetition process versus the experience inside of your own brain synthesizing all of the information that you're seeing in front of you. Why are we missing that link and that understanding as we are training this next generation of teachers?

[Niels Hoven]

Right. It's kind of, it's kind of wild. The, the idea that people learn to read naturally, the same way that they learn to talk naturally should be obviously false to anybody who looks at the world and sees almost everybody can talk, but there's a whole lot of people who can't read. So as it turns out, we now understand that most people do need explicit instruction to learn how to read. And so there's two schools of thought. There's certainly phonics, which is the idea that we teach kids letter sounds and how to blend them together. And there's this other school of thought that's called whole word literacy, whole word teaching, which is teaching kids to recognize each individual word, guess at each individual word based on the context around it, as though each individual word was some kind of picture. So you can learn 44 English sounds, or you can memorize 100 English words, or you can memorize 100,000 English words. And so what we've seen over the past, I don't know, maybe 10, 20 years is there are more states saying, no, actually, you do need to teach phonics. You do need to teach kids letter sounds. And so this merging of balanced literacy has essentially become a compromise of let's teach kids the good habits of phonics, but let's also teach them the bad habits of guessing at words based on the pictures and content around them. And so the movement we're seeing now is a lot of people saying, actually, maybe we should not be teaching kids to be bad readers. Maybe we should go back to giving them the fundamentals that they need to learn to read. Because right now, one in three fourth graders cannot read at a basic level, which is a shocking statistic that most people have never heard.

[Isabel Brown]

That's truly beyond insane to me. I mean, this is the United States of America, supposedly the world leader in just about everything in the year 2025, where we are told that the more funding goes into a school district, the more resources we have, the larger the teachers union, the larger the bureaucracy behind all of this, the greater the outcome is going to be for our students. And yet we're now discovering that there are millions of children in our country in the public school system going to school every day that truly cannot read the words on the whiteboard. Out of all of this, and discovering that there was such a need in the market for American families and discovering that there were so many children not learning how to read in school, you were inspired to do something about it and to start your company. Mental. But so can you tell us a little bit about how that process got started and what some of the response has been since then?

[Niels Hoven]

Yeah, so I actually, I am a. I am honestly a big supporter of public school. I went to public school. My kids go to public school. I had an incredible public school education, you know, 30 years ago, and. And when I went to public school, they would find they would divide kids up by ability and they would teach kids material that is relevant to the kid's current ability and the ability and how fast they're able to learn. And so I was supported in Learning very, very quickly all through middle school, all through high school, and just had an incredible time in public school. And so I know what is possible, I believe, in the potential of public school. And unfortunately, what we have seen over the following three decades is this move of schools away from a goal of education and more towards a goal of equalization. Schools have become about equalization rather than education. And the question is, how do we essentially falsely engineer, how do we artificially engineer equal outcomes rather than giving kids equal opportunity? And so what we see in schools is we see the disappearance of gifted classes, we see the disappearance of honors classes, we see the disappearance of opportunities for kids to learn any sort of material above grade level. It is essentially holding everybody back to the lowest common denominator. And I think it's a tragedy. And so I wanted my kids to be able to control their own destiny and learn as fast as they wanted to learn. And the first piece of the puzzle to make sure that can happen is ensuring that they're able to read. And so I wanted them to be able. Not able to be able to read, but to be able to teach themselves to read. And I started looking at all the different products on the market. What are the books that are available to teach your kids to read or the pieces of software that are available to teach your kids to read. And there was some stuff that was okay, but there wasn't anything that was good enough. And as I started talking to more families, I realized that this wasn't just something that I was struggling with. Lots of families out there are trying to figure out, how do I ensure my child's learning needs are going to be met at school? I'm a big believer that the best way to do that is to teach kids to teach themselves. And the problem is there aren't enough tools out there that are really good at allowing kids to teach themselves. And so that was what Metaba was founded for, to try and create those tools to make it easier for kids to teach themselves to learn as fast as they want, at whatever speed they want. And the first step in that is teaching reading. And so now we have the Metabo reading software. We're getting kids as young as two up to a second grade reading level in as short as three months. Not typical. Most kids take maybe six months to get to a second grade reading level. But it can happen really, really fast with good instruction in a motivating environment.

[Isabel Brown]

That's so important for me to hear. I was one of those kids that was really given the environment to teach myself how to read. And as a result of that, reading was my biggest passion and my biggest hobby growing up. It's something that I very much hope to share with my kids moving forward. But you're right, I think there has been this fundamental shift in the entire American education system. I wouldn't even isolate this to public schools in the last 10 years at an accelerated rate that we've never seen before to equalize outcomes from education. And the only way to do that is to bring the ceiling down, not the floor up. We're seeing that in math, we're seeing that in standardized testing, if schools are even doing that anymore. And we're certainly seeing that with reading now. So when you're seeing, you know, a quarter of students who can't read at grade level, the answer isn't to help those students bring the floor up. The answer is just to not teach.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Kids how to read at all, I.

[Isabel Brown]

Guess, and create a completely illiterate society. But what's fascinating is you're getting quite a bit of backlash from teachers, from educational experts, so to speak, for doing all of this, because they claim that you are not educated enough or titled enough or smart enough to help kids learn how to fall in love with reading again. Can you paint a picture of what that backlash has looked like?

[Niels Hoven]

Yeah, it's been kind of wild, because you're absolutely right. It's not just public schools. I was talking to a hedge fund manager in New York for whom essentially, money is not an option. He had his kids in the best private school he could find in Manhattan, and he wanted them to learn faster in math, and the school would not support that. They essentially said, we have a whole wait list of parents who are happy to take your child's place. So if you don't like the way we're teaching, it's our way or the highway. And so it is crazy that you can't even solve this problem by, as a hedge fund manager, throwing money at it. So they're homeschooling now. And it is this white tower of academia that is so resistant to any ideas coming from outside it. And, you know, when I've been posting about our software and the results we're getting, we're posting pictures, we're posting videos of our students, our two year olds, our three year olds, our four year olds, reading at a high level on Twitter, and I get pushback, and I think the most common criticism I get are, what are your credentials? You haven't been in a classroom, you're not a teacher. And I like to say I don't have credentials. In fact, there are thousands of parents every year who get a $17 book off of Amazon and teach their kids to read. It's not rocket science. And so I, I don't have any credentials. We just have results. And that's what kicked off this whole conversation of there's an education PhD out of Australia who came back and said, you are never going to convince me that efficacy should be the driver of education. Efficacy is getting the results you want. That is the definition of efficacy. And people said she must be nuts. Is she confusing efficacy and efficiency? Does she mean that education should not be efficient? Surely she means that education should get results. And she clarified, she said, no, no, no, you will never convince me that results should be the driver of education.

And so this is the mentality coming out of the white tower of academia. And I think the important thing to realize is that these are not popular, these are not popular ideas. It is broadly accepted, bipartisan across Republicans and Democrats that schools should be helping kids reach their potential. We should be nurturing excellence schools. When San Francisco got rid of middle school algebra a decade ago, it took a decade of fighting for it to get back in front of voters. But 80% of San Francisco voted put algebra back in middle school. So these are deeply unpopular policies that are being championed by anti excellence ideologues in policy making positions of power. And the only way that they change is when parents and voters sit up and take notice and demand that our schools return to their focus of encouraging excellence.

[Isabel Brown]

I cannot wait for my daughter to be old enough to be playing with Mentala and learning how to teach herself how to read. But as she's doing that, I've been trying to teach myself how to read nutrition labels specifically because I want to be so much more intentional about the type of food that I'm exposing my daughter to every single day. If you are a mom who also wants the best food for your kid, but you still wonder, is this actually safe, non toxic or the best clean option? You might be finding that food labels are so, so misleading in the process. So seed oils, additives that are banned in Europe, endocrine disruptors, microplastics, heavy metals. It is incredibly overwhelming just the sheer amount of stuff we have to navigate every day as moms. Which is exactly why I love using my favorite app called Olive. Olive is like having a clean living expert right in your pocket. It is 100% independent. There are no brands paying for better ratings on the app, just credible, transparent information that you can Actually trust one quick scan of a barcode and Olive looks past all the marketing to flag any ultra processing sketchy additives, seed oils or hidden contaminants. If you scan and a food scores poorly, Olive even recommends a safer, cleaner, non toxic alternative for you to choose instead. And they're building the most comprehensive independent database of lab tested products out there. It's not just talk. Olive recently completed the largest independent baby food study ever done, which means a whole lot to me as we've been starting solids with our beautiful daughter Isla over the past six weeks or so. This was over 300 different products tested for lead and arsenic in actual ISO accredited labs with real testing and real results. So if you want to know if your baby's food has been contaminated with lead, scary stuff, you can just scan it with Olive. I've even been using Olive late at night when I really can't sleep. In the middle of all of our sleep regression that is still in existence.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Nearly eight months into my daughter's life.

[Isabel Brown]

Pray for my sanity and for extra caffeine to start researching ahead. As I'm meal prepping or I'm thinking about recipes or I'm placing an instacart delivery order, I can know exactly what the ingredients are and if it's remotely safe to be feeding myself, my husband or our daughter well before I even hit add to cart or go to the grocery store to pick it up in person. It is truly the way to make your family health again as we seek to make America healthy again. So if RFK Jr. S MAHA message is resonating with you, but you are so tired of decoding really confusing labels and ingredients that you can't even begin to pronounce. Olive is about to become your best friend. It is the app for the Maha movement. My listeners get an exclusive 7 day free trial from here on the Isabel Brown show. You guys can try Olive scan your pantry. Make sure you're feeding your family only the very best. Go download Olive now in the App store. That's so beautifully said and I'm really.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Glad you brought up this educator in.

[Isabel Brown]

Australia, Rachel Jefferson, who of course lists on Twitter that she has a PhD behind her name. Thank you.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

I'm pretty sure we probably could have.

[Isabel Brown]

Deduced that for ourselves, but she recently.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Tweeted a couple weeks ago I looked at your LinkedIn profile referencing you and can see nothing there but your tech and sales experience.

[Isabel Brown]

So tags you at Niels Hoven.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Maybe you should cool it when you're talking about education with such authority.

[Isabel Brown]

This authority Concept is really jarring to me as a new parent. I don't recall it being this hostile towards parents when I was a child growing up. In the late 90s and early 2000s, parents were encouraged to be an active part and role in their child's education. In fact, education was not something that you were supposed to drop at the door when you left school every day. You were supposed to bring it home with you. And it was this holistic part of your child's life. It had to be supported by parents. It's why we had parent teacher conferences so regularly. Right. Parents were supposed to be involved in the process. And now I'm watching our society, not just in America, but really across Western civilization and demean and attack and otherize parents for even wanting to know what's going on in their child's classroom. You have this amazing thriving business that's encouraging at home learning as a supplement to education or to be incorporated in alternative education models, which I love. But as you also mentioned, you're a dad, so can you talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing on the ground in terms of the parents response to this broken education model and just how bad this white tower.

[Brock (Isabel's Husband)]

Of academia really is?

[Niels Hoven]

So, yeah, I mean, I think the biggest concern that a lot of parents have with our schools is this essentially one size fits all model of education. The idea that every child should be moving at the same pace. So the idea that kids should be taught based on their ability, that we should take the material and match it to what the kid is ready to learn. We used to call this idea ability grouping. Put kids together who are ready to learn the same material and give them that material. And it's kind of crazy. This idea of grouping kids by ability is now roundly opposed across the education ecosystem. The National Council, Council of Teachers in Mathematics, the National Council of Teachers in English, the National Education association, all these organizations who drive education advocacy have come out and said, we do not support teaching kids based on their ability, which is nuts. And so what you have is you have this education system and it's not only failing to support the kids who want to move faster, it's also the struggling students who need material matched to them, maybe moving a little bit slower, maybe giving them an opportunity to catch up. And so this one size fits all model is failing kids across the spectrum. So what I really do hear from parents is saying, my kid wants to move at a different pace, they are hungry for learning or they need more support. How can I make sure that they get the individual support they need. That really is our vision with Mantaba. I don't want to see it becoming this alternative to schools. I actually see this as a tool that we can put into schools and allow teachers more flexibility to allow different kids to move at different paces. Right now, there are more kids using Mentava for free than there are paying for it, because we make it available for free to schools in order to support those teachers who are struggling to support a whole bunch of kids who need to be moving and learning at different paces.

[Isabel Brown]

I love hearing that, and I love hearing the innovative idea of putting this into our education system. You know, I think there's a lot wrong with how we're doing school right now. We talk about that a lot on the show, and I hear that more often from parents every single day who interact with our content. But that's not a reason to just give up. That's a reason that we have to come up with innovative solutions to help our kids and the kids who come after them. So on that note, for anybody who's watching this that might be interested in learning a little bit more about Mentava, where can they find the platform, give us the logistics of how it operates, and how can they follow you and your continued voice and advocacy in education?

[Niels Hoven]

Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that I want to be upfront about with Mentalva is that we have been. We. We are designed to be a replacement for a private tutor. We are really expensive. We cost $500 a month, and we are an insanely expensive product. And I will say that up front, but we are not the only way to teach your kid to read. So if you want to learn more about Mentaba, you can go to mentala.com, but if you want to teach your kid to read, you can also get a $17 book off of Amazon that essentially teaches the same curriculum we do. It's just phonics. It's taking letters. It's learning letter sounds. It's blending them together. And thousands of parents do this every year. So you do not need to be dependent on the white tower of academia. You can be empowered. You can do this yourself. Find the tool that works best for your family.

[Isabel Brown]

So important. Niels, thank you so much for your innovation, your advocacy, and we'll be sure to have you back on the show sometime very soon.

[Niels Hoven]

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

[Isabel Brown]

I love seeing solutions like this because it just goes to show that everything my dad and I always talk about when it comes to homeschooling I know I've said this on the show before is true. My dad and I had a conversation about a year ago that was so fascinating. My parents are attorneys. They're incredibly well educated. They're very, very smart people. But my dad made a comment to me about a year ago saying they never even remotely considered homeschooling myself or my two sisters because they genuinely bought into the narrative that they were too stupid to educate their own kids. And I think about that now. My parents are genuinely some of the smartest people I've ever met in my entire life and they think about it now and think that's insane. How did I ever buy into the idea that I was going to mess up my kids somehow by taking more ownership over their education and by the grace of God. My sisters and I were very well educated growing up. We had amazing teachers. There were certainly bumps along the road, as there are for any family in the educational journey. But to know that there are tools like a mental to teach your two or three year old how to read like a second grader in a matter of months is so empowering and so inspiring. As we are also watching this rise of the American homeschooling movement well over I saw a statistic not long ago. In fact, check me if if I'm wrong on this. Well over 10% of American families are actively in the process of starting homeschooling and that may even be higher now. That was post Covid statistics in some older years. But I am so encouraged by seeing this entire generation of young parents say we are no longer outsourcing or farming out the education of our kids to someone who's more accredited than I am, or who's more of an expert than I am, or who has more PhDs than I am. Because the truth is, they don't even know how to teach. They have just been regurgitated the exact same talking points from their failed teachers on college and university campuses and the cycle keeps repeating as America leads the race to the bottom in public education worldwide. This is incredible for me to see that solutions like this are coming to fruition and I can't wait to be using them with my daughter Isla and any future children that I have in the next couple of years. If you guys are homeschooling, I'm dying to know what your favorite homeschool curriculum models are. So please, please please drop them in the comments of this episode because we would love to cover more of this topic. I know it's something you guys are requesting that we talk about a whole lot. And this topic, like many others, is a highly requested one from you. So if you have any other topics or guests that you really want to see on the Isabel Brown show, as always, please feel free to send them all over via DM or comment on any one of our episodes. Love you guys so very much. And we'll be back for the show tomorrow for another great one.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Isabel Brown]

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