Wives, don’t allow your husband to tutor you

I have heard Hubby giving directions over the phone to a guest coming over to our home. Usually, I pity the guest because they often end up missing a crucial turn off from the main road, which means another round of driving before getting back to our road once again.

“Make it instructional, not informative…” He shakes his head when I tell him this, clearly lost in my teacher-speak. Informative is like watching an advertisement about a product, while instructional is an in-depth guide on doing something.

Hubby gives directions like Google maps, only without the visuals. “Take a left turn, then turn northeast…” at least; that is how it sounds to me who prefers to use landmarks. 

I am not hating on husbands, but they make terrible instructors, whether with directions or teaching a skill. Has your man ever tried teaching you something, for example, driving a car? You left him in the middle of the road and, fuming, took a matatu back home, right?

Mine had attempted to teach me Statistics when I kept failing the unit in my postgraduate course. After torturous classes with the Statistics professor, he almost quit his teaching job, the lecturer finally called me aside.

Complicated matters

“I don’t get it. You consistently score below the pass mark in Statistics, yet I checked with other tutors, and you seem to excel in all the other courses,” he had said, giving me my term paper, brightly marked all over in red.

He did not have the heart to grade it but was kind enough to list down dozens of journals, including- one titled; The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Statistics. Before paying for private tuition, I got a light bulb moment. Hubby! My husband is one of those weird people that scored A in Mathematics and who, to date, do mental math for all their calculations without breaking a sweat. Why pay for tuition when I had a resident mathematician? Bad idea, big mistake.

He gladly agreed to tutor me and was happy to receive the creative payment plan that I offered instead of cash. Within minutes of lesson one, we were in the middle of a fat tiff. First, he used jargon throughout and complicated matters when explaining the very same jargon. Secondly, he came up with a work plan that suited the teacher but not the learner.

“Okay, the best way to learn is by going through the past test papers.” He said that I had fetched the papers faster than you can say stats. He then proceeded to work out all the questions (or problems) from the past term paper and lost all patience with me.

I struggled with question one while he was in question number 21. I told him off for being a terrible teacher, and he said how sorry he felt for my lecturer. An external tutor eventually helped me pass the statistics unit, plus my lecturer had me sit an assessment that confirmed I was dyscalculic, which explains away a lot of my problems in life.

You would imagine that after this experience, we would be wiser and not fancy any teacher, student kind of scenarios between us. Wapi! The other day, I was struggling with some formulas and derivatives – saying this gives me a migraine - and I went to him. Once again, he was more than glad to be of help. He got engrossed in the computer and did some magic with the excel sheet while mumbling and creating formulas, which looked like hieroglyphics.

“How am I supposed to make a presentation with this? I need to understand them.” I protested.

He looked stunned.

“But I just explained!”

I was double stunned.

“No, you didn’t! Nothing makes sense.”

So, when he tried to teach me some financial logic about investments he had in mind, I knew we were in for a long-drawn fight.

First, we have as diverse money personalities as earth and sky, and now he wanted to teach me his money formulas and reasoning?

“Share a link; I will go check it online,” I said, know wiser, more intelligent, peace-loving.

I know better than to enlist my husband as a tutor.

Karimi is a wife who believes in marriage. [email protected]