Learning with paper, rather than with screens. Not at all surprised.

 You can read the article quoted below here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/kids-reading-better-paper-vs-screen

there’s been curiously little discussion in this debate about the physical object most children use to read, which, starting long before the arrival of Covid, has increasingly been an illuminated screen displaying pixelated type instead of a printed or photocopied text. What if the principal culprit behind the fall of middle-school literacy is neither a virus, nor a union leader, nor “remote learning”?

Fourth grade is when a crucial shift occurs from what another researcher describes as ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’

Until recently there has been no scientific answer to this urgent question, but a soon-to-be published, groundbreaking study from neuroscientists at Columbia University’s Teachers College has come down decisively on the matter: for “deeper reading” there is a clear advantage to reading a text on paper, rather than on a screen, where “shallow reading was observed”.

Using a sample of 59 children aged 10 to 12, a team led by Dr Karen Froud asked its subjects to read original texts in both formats while wearing hair nets filled with electrodes that permitted the researchers to analyze variations in the children’s brain responses. Performed in a laboratory at Teachers College with strict controls, the study used an entirely new method of word association in which the children “performed single-word semantic judgment tasks” after reading the passages.

Vital to the usefulness of the study was the age of the participants – a three-year period that is “critical in reading development” – since fourth grade is when a crucial shift occurs from what another researcher describes as “learning to read” to “reading to learn”....

 For more than a decade, social scientists, including the Norwegian scholar Anne Mangen, have been reporting on the superiority of reading comprehension and retention on paper. As Froud’s team says in its article: “Reading both expository and complex texts from paper seems to be consistently associated with deeper comprehension and learning” across the full range of social scientific literature.

A pattern in Lehi’s life in Jerusalem. Prayer and revelation and discipleship in a dangerous world. 1st Nephi, chapter 1

 I am thinking about Lehi…growing up with a sense of having been blessed by the Lord, and a clear knowledge of “the goodness and mysteries of God“ and living his life in a city that shows ever increasing departure from God’s guidance, including the embracing of violence.  He lives there at a time when there are prophets actively pointing out the embracing of sin and calling for repentance and a return to God.  (verses 1-4)

So, what does Lehi do first?  He doesn’t condemn, despise, reject, denigrate, or verbally assault those who are actively involved in wicked, destructive behavior.  He doesn’t aid or abet division in his society, calling on others who see what he sees to overthrow the perpetrators of violence, etc.  Instead, he prays for those who are fostering violence and greed and other sins in his society. (verse 5)

And it is that actively praying for “those who despitefully use… and persecute..” (Matthew 5:44) that opens his mind and heart to receive life changing, amazing, personal revelation as to how to proceed: first to be able to see what was coming, and secondly, to be firmly and irrevocably reminded of the amazing power, mercy and love of God, and particularly His mercy towards those who come to Him. (verse 14)

So now his great dismay over the sins of his generation is no longer his primary emotion.  Instead his heart is turned into “rejoicing because of the things…which the Lord had shown unto him”. (verse15)

Lehi’s next actions, because of this encounter with that amazingly loving, merciful, powerful God, were not to spend time despising or actively working to discredit those who were fostering wickedness, but rather his resultant actions were to point out and call those sins (not those people) reprehensible, and to share what he had learned about a divine and loving God (his love, mercy, goodness) and what he had learned from God (what was ahead) as a result of that divine encounter; “to declare unto them concerning the the things that he had both seen and heard”.  (verse 18)

His words were not well received, to say the least. (verse 19)  In fact his life was threatened. (verse 20).

So what saved his life in a society where disagreeing with a powerful man could get you killed?  The same thing that had enlightened his understanding in verse 5…communication with God and following the divine instructions/inspiration he received, (2 Nephi:1-2) which is how the journey begins.