TPS-IL

By Pesach Benson • December 11, 2025

Jerusalem, 11 December, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Starting in February, students in Israeli elementary schools will no longer be allowed to use cell phones on school grounds, Education Minister Yoav Kisch announced on Thursday.

“We are allowing children to return and truly meet each other, reduce external distractions, and expand the human and natural connection between students, without screens,” Kisch said. “Creating a school space that enables social and emotional growth for our children is our commitment and responsibility.”

Kisch emphasized that the decision is part of a broader systemic effort “to reduce distractions, strengthen social ties, and ensure optimal conditions for learning.”

Phones will only be permitted in designated classes where controlled use is approved for learning purposes. The ministry plans to support schools through educational programs in classrooms and dialogue with parents, aiming to foster balanced phone use, prevent social media misuse, and limit exposure to inappropriate content. The emphasis, Kisch said, is on cultivating social and emotional skills and encouraging face-to-face interaction among students.

“This is a huge and powerful step,” Kisch said. “Several months ago, the ministry held a broad staff meeting on the use of mobile phones among Israeli children. Excessive use of cell phones creates a feeling of loneliness and depression. Some schools are already doing it, by choice. The noise has returned to the schools, and everyone has stopped being on the screen. At the moment, the move will not be in middle schools and high schools.”

Ina Salzman, Senior Deputy Director and Director of the Ministry’s Pedagogical Administration, stressed the link between phone use and academic outcomes.

“The more cell phones are used by students, the lower the students’ achievements,” she said. “Our emphasis for administrators and education teams is to create social activities and social skills. We will also engage parents to reduce screen time at home. Sixty percent of teenagers are addicted to social networks, and the earlier they start, the harder it is to break the habit.” She noted that many children receive smartphones as early as first grade.

Unlike previous guidelines, which gave principals wide discretion, the new policy applies to all areas of the school, including breaks.

“Today it will be mandatory. There will be positive noise: there will be no use of smartphones in school,” Kisch said. “Parents understand the importance of the move. The policy is no use, but not a ban on bringing cell phones.”

According to ministry Director General Meir Shimoni, the ban’s delay until February is to give people an adjustment period. “We know that it will not happen all at once, it will be a process. But cell phones will be outside of schools,” he said.

By Pesach Benson • December 9, 2025

Jerusalem, 9 December, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Learning doesn’t have to slow down with age. In fact, new Israeli-U.S. research shows that older adults can thrive when taught the way young people are—through active participation, meaningful discussion, and material that connects to their lives. The findings suggest that seniors can boost memory, maintain emotional well-being, and even gain a renewed sense of purpose by engaging in education that respects their life experience.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed Educational Gerontology, was conducted by Prof. Anat Zohar of the Seymour Fox School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Yochai Z. Shavit of the Stanford Center on Longevity. It challenges the long-held assumption that aging inevitably limits learning, showing instead that the right teaching methods can help older adults thrive.

“We’re teaching older adults the wrong way,” said Zohar. “The dominant model is still the lecture, but it is built on assumptions that simply don’t hold for older learners. First, it relies heavily on memorization, even though memory is the very ability that tends to decline with age. Second, it doesn’t connect new ideas to the rich knowledge and life experience older adults already have—one of their greatest learning resources. And third, lectures rarely create the meaningful, relevant learning and relationships that drive motivation in later life. Despite the large industry built around them, lectures just don’t work pedagogically. Older adults enjoy attending them, but they don’t retain enough. High-quality, active learning can support cognitive abilities, promote health, and even contribute to longer lives.”

The research emphasizes that older adults learn best when education taps into their motivations, connects new knowledge to previous experience, and allows for active engagement. These principles mirror the methods that help children and young adults learn deeply, suggesting that age does not require a fundamentally different approach—just one that respects and builds on life experience.

The study builds on earlier research by the same team, which examined nineteen highly educated women in the “third age.” That research found that many participants felt they were learning better than at any earlier stage of life. They reported deeper understanding because they could connect new knowledge to decades of accumulated experience, challenging stereotypes about cognitive decline.

Shavit highlighted the psychological benefits of later-life learning. “Older adulthood is a time of real psychological depth,” he said. “When education taps into older adults’ motivations, like the search for meaning, connection, and self-understanding, it becomes not just effective, but deeply rewarding.”

Despite growing evidence supporting active, meaningful learning, many programs for older adults still rely on lecture-based formats. In the United States alone, the broader continuing education sector—which includes adult courses, vocational programs, and professional training—was valued at USD 66.9 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach about USD 96 billion by 2030. Yet a substantial portion of this spending continues to flow into formats that do not align with older adults’ learning needs.

The study suggests that universities, community colleges, and online learning platforms can apply these findings by redesigning courses to incorporate group discussions, hands-on projects, problem-solving exercises, and real-world case studies.

Employers and health programs can also benefit from these insights. Workplace training for older employees can shift from passive instruction to interactive workshops, mentorship, and collaborative problem-solving, boosting skill acquisition and motivation. Similarly, cognitive health initiatives—such as language classes, skill-building workshops, or lifelong learning programs—can help maintain mental sharpness, support emotional well-being, and even contribute to longer, more engaged lives, turning education into both a professional and personal resource for older adults.

“Older adults are not a separate category requiring entirely different rules,” Zohar said. “They are part of the continuous story of human learning, and education should treat them that way.”

By Pesach Benson • December 7, 2025

Jerusalem, 7 December, 2025 (TPS-IL) — For many adults recovering from cancer, finishing treatment does not mean the end of challenges. Subtle but disruptive changes in memory, attention, and mental processing—often called “chemobrain”—can make work, relationships, and everyday routines unexpectedly difficult. A new study offers hope that a remote, group-based cognitive rehabilitation program can help survivors regain confidence, improve daily functioning, and feel less alone in the process.

The intervention combines cognitive training exercises with occupational-therapy–based strategies and weekly group sessions conducted entirely online. In the pilot study, a small group of adults participated in six weekly meetings and engaged in personalized digital brain-training activities.

Participants reported noticeable improvements in their ability to manage everyday tasks, from organizing work projects to handling household responsibilities. Beyond cognitive gains, many said the group format helped them feel understood and supported, providing emotional validation and a sense of community that eased the isolation often experienced after cancer treatment.

The remote, online format allowed participants to join from home, making it easier to fit the program into their daily routines. Its digital, group-based design also makes the intervention scalable, offering the potential to reach a larger number of survivors without the logistical challenges of in-person programs.

“Cancer survivors often tell us they feel like they’ve ‘lost’ parts of themselves after treatment,” said Prof. Yafit Gilboa, the principal investigator of the study. “Our goal was to offer a practical, compassionate, and accessible way to help them regain control—to show them that their cognitive challenges are real, understandable, and, importantly, treatable. Seeing participants improve in the activities that matter most to them is exactly why we do this work.”

While improvements in objective cognitive tests were modest—common in research on cancer-related cognitive impairment—most participants reported meaningful gains in self-perceived cognitive functioning.

The program, known as CRAFT-G (Cognitive Retraining and Functional Treatment – Group version), was developed by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Based on these promising early results, the team concludes that the approach is both feasible and potentially effective. They recommend larger trials to further validate its benefits, and a new study is already underway focusing on breast cancer survivors.

The research, published in *Supportive Care in Cancer* under the title “Remote group intervention for adults with cancer-related cognitive impairment: a feasibility study,” highlights the potential of online, group-based interventions to help survivors manage the cognitive effects of cancer treatment and reclaim their daily lives.

By Pesach Benson • November 24, 2025

Jerusalem, 24 November, 2025 (TPS-IL) — A study that could influence everything from child development research to the design of more natural-sounding AI argues that human language arose not from one evolutionary breakthrough but from the gradual convergence of biological capacities and cultural learning, according to Israeli scientists.

For centuries, scientists and philosophers have sought to explain how humans evolved the ability to speak, create grammar, and share meaning. Despite language being one of the defining traits of the human species, its roots have remained elusive.

Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem attempted to break the impasse by bringing together findings from linguistics, psychology, genetics, neuroscience, and animal communication, creating what the authors describe as a unified framework for understanding language evolution.

Their study, recently published in the peer-reviewed Science journal, argues that language must be understood as a biocultural phenomenon built from multiple evolutionary threads rather than a single origin point.

“Crucially, our goal was not to come up with our own particular explanation of language evolution,” said first author Inbal Arnon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Instead, we wanted to show how multifaceted and biocultural perspectives, combined with newly emerging sources of data, can shed new light on old questions.”

The researchers argue that no isolated biological or cultural capacity can explain the emergence of language. Human communication, they say, arose from the intersection of abilities such as producing novel sounds, recognizing patterns, forming complex social bonds, and transmitting knowledge within and across generations. This interaction between biology and culture, they believe, is essential for understanding how language became the richly structured system humans use today.

“The multifaceted nature of language can make it difficult to study, but also expands horizons for understanding its evolutionary origins,” said co-author Simon Fisher of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University. “Rather than looking for that one special thing that singles humans out, we can identify different facets involved in language, and productively study them not just in our own species but also in non-human animals from different branches of the evolutionary tree.”

The authors caution that research has sometimes stalled because different scientific disciplines examined language in isolation. They argue that advancing the field requires an integrated approach capable of capturing the full range of biological and cultural forces that shape communication.

To illustrate the value of their framework, the paper examines three areas where a biocultural perspective helps clarify long-standing questions.

One focus is vocal learning, a skill crucial for human speech but limited among our closest primate relatives. Species such as birds, bats, and whales show far stronger vocal-learning abilities, and the authors say those comparisons offer key insights into human speech.

The research also highlights the slow emergence of linguistic structure, saying grammar took shape over generations through repeated use and cultural transmission, a process evident in the development of new sign languages and in laboratory simulations.

The study also points to the social foundations of language, noting that humans’ strong inclination to share information underpins communication yet appears rarely in other animals.

The findings offer several practical implications. For early childhood language interventions, the framework suggests that difficulties in speech or comprehension may arise from different underlying facets — such as vocal learning, pattern recognition, or social motivation — allowing clinicians to target therapies more precisely rather than treating language as a single, uniform skill.

The study also has relevance for artificial intelligence, indicating that communication systems become complex not through one breakthrough but through gradual cultural transmission and social interaction. AI models designed to learn in more interactive, human-like ways could develop more natural communication abilities.

Additionally, the biocultural approach may help researchers better understand and diagnose communication disorders by showing which specific components of language break down in conditions such as autism, developmental language disorder, or aphasia, leading to more focused and effective treatments.

By Pesach Benson • November 23, 2025

Jerusalem, 23 November, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Israeli Baja motorcycle racer Alona Ben Natan on Sunday took second place in the Dubai Baja World Cup, propelling her to the number one female racer in the overall Baja World Cup.

“This race, for me, what was important is to finish the race because I am leading the world championship in the female category,” Ben Natan told The Press Service of Israel after the race.

Other races on the Baja World Cup circuit include Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

“I wasn’t in Saudi Arabia or Jordan because of the situation, but I competed in other races. Most of them I finished first or second. That’s why I have the highest qualification,” the 36-year-old Ben Natan explained to TPS-IL.

In Baja racing, competitors thread their way from waypoint to waypoint, making split-second route choices over hundreds of kilometers each day. “It’s all about navigation, focus and to ride very fast,” Ben Natan explained to TPS-IL while training for the Dubai race.

She hopes to amass enough points and sponsors to participate in the Dakar Rally.