Is there a way to explain hooks without mentioning class component?

Yes, as well I don't think you want to start with useState in this scenario. Instead, you should teach about regular JS functions and how something very simple can be turned into a Hook. I have created an article about custom Hooks, and aside from using the word class a few times in the article I could remove that information about hwo things "use to be done". But yeah I think teaching how to create simple and custom hooks is a great way to teach about the subject without talking about classes.

I also think that when teaching about useState that it's good to tell the backstroy about classes and how this.state was accessed and used in a simple scenario and then explaining how that works with Hooks. This could be a second part to learning Hooks after you teach custome Hooks first.

I think it's definitely possible, but I wonder what the mental gymnastics to do so will accomplish, given that hooks have been a part of "official" React for barely two weeks, and that stateful components are all over the place in production code. I've pondered this question myself, and I think about that thing that Kent C. Dodds said about "You should feel that pain caused by a problem before you reach for a third-party dependency that solves it.", and that hooks are similar. They certainly reduce a lot of code, but learning about how "vanilla" state was handled with class components, Redux, etc will contextualize how great hooks are, and precisely how much effort they can save us.

The same way you could explain classes without explaining Hooks, it’s easier to do the comparison if you already know classes, but for someone new to React there is no reason to mention classes, explains what state is, what useState returns and how to use it.

Simple answer: I can't explain it either

But I don't think I'll want to do that just yet. It's like explaining Array methods like map without mentioning for loops