Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Education
The future lies in understanding the ‘why’ of Mathematics
Excerpts from article by Manan Khurma, published in The Times Of India
Math is everywhere around us, whether we realise it or not. Every time we Google something, or order something online, or automatically get recommendations for products that we are looking for, there is math at play behind the scenes. Even understanding the spread of Covid-19 is a math problem
* There’s much more to math than we learn in school
There is much more to math than what we learn in school. It can be said that math, coding and data sciences will be among the driving forces of the 21st century.
People with mathematical and analytical skills will have a wide choice of jobs in the spheres of data science, programming and machine learning.
* Math needs to be taught in the right manner
It is important that children’s exposure to math should happen right from kindergarten onward and with an approach that can be called ‘Math by Reasoning’.
When math is taught visually, by distilling the core principles, it helps to establish the concept in the student’s mind, and they are then able to apply it in a new context. They then see math as a friendly, useful power and begin to love it.
* Not all online classes and e-learning programs get it right
With the ongoing pandemic, parents are increasingly concerned about their children not being able to get quality education. Even outside school, most of the existing e-learning platforms are either free videos, or classes with thousands of students.
The freedom to ask doubts in a judgement-free environment and the opportunity to practise under supervision are crucial to learning. However, pre-recorded videos, or even “live” videos, don’t really allow for students to interact with their teachers or with each other in a meaningful one-on-one manner. It has much the same joy as talking to a chat-bot. Even the teacher’s ability to stimulate the child’s thinking by creating meaning, wonder, and joy around the subject is limited in such a setting.
* Math needs to be learned intuitively
We need to steadily challenge the conventional way in which students have been taught math, and inculcate a strong base of skills such as coding, data analysis and problem-solving.
For this, the new-age pedagogy should focus more on helping students visualise and build their own mental models to understand concepts better.
Math should be learned like one learns a language – by visualising the answer; by solving the problem intuitively rather than memorising a bunch of formulae and applying them. Students learn better when they learn visually.
Learning math is like learning to ride a bicycle, or swimming. It might seem difficult at first; one might even fall or flounder on some occasions. But, over time, you learn to do it intuitively.
Career
Set the Bar high
Excerpts from article by Sister Rose Mary Ballapa, published in The Hindu
If you can cope with stressful situations and enjoy constructive and tactful arguments, then, a career in law beckons.
Pursuing Law offers a promising career with a myriad opportunities, due to globalisation in the legal sector. The private sector has opened doors to law professionals to work in real estate, healthcare, film industry and housing. This has led to transnational legal structures and discourses, and blurring of lines in the industry.
Multiple options
Usually, colleges make it mandatory for students to take up all the subjects in the first year to help them select the right specialisation, as it plays a significant role in building a successful career.
Before choosing a specialisation, students must first pursue an undergraduate (UG) degree such as BA LLB (Hons.), BBA LLB, BLS-LLB, B.Com LLB, BSc LLB.
Some widely chosen options offered by the top law colleges in India are: Business and Corporate Law; Criminal and Security Law; Human Rights Law; Labour Law; Media Law and Intellectual Property Law.
Here are some tips to help students pick their specialisations:
1. Assess your abilities
Understanding and analysing your strengths and weaknesses and making a decision that takes these into account impacts one’s future. Although universities offer a curriculum prepared by experts, it is up to the student to extract the knowledge, evaluate it carefully and decide which specialisation will prove beneficial.
For example, If you are an excellent orator and skilled at public speaking, you could be appropriate for litigation. On the other hand, if public speaking isn’t your strength, you can opt for transactional law that requires one-on-one communication.
2. Future opportunities
Research what working in that field entails. With many available options, getting inputs from credible sources like those working in that area is critical. Then students can consider the feedback, correlate them with the skill set, and take the final call.
For example, Corporate Law is an upcoming and increasingly popular specialisation, according to industry experts. It focuses on how corporates interact externally through commercial transactions and internally through corporate governance. With the growing industrialisation, this field is here to stay.
3. Pay scale
While Law offers a plethora of specialisations, the job market tends to fluctuate. While some jobs are prone to saturation, the demand for others keep increasing. This changing cycle needs to be studied while choosing one’s specialisation field.
The salary of a lawyer wanting to start practice in a court differs significantly from someone working with the legal process outsourcing. Although Law is a lucrative profession, the pay scale is affected by factors such as a lawyer’s calibre, popularity and experience.
For example, business lawyers were among the highest paid, but today, it is cyber lawyers because technological advances have led to a increase in cybercrimes.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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