Make an effort to be an excellent partner

Did you see that child’s homework making the rounds on social media? The one with pictures of home appliances and our ‘CBC’ child was expected to identify and name the items appropriately. Amongst the pictures were the small great wall television, a small transistor radio, the ones we borrowed from our uncles to catch Sundowner, and a calculator.

The child confidently identified the television as a microwave, the radio as a satellite phone, and the calculator as a smartphone. Other items included the old dial telephone, which, for the sweet life of that little human, they could not identify. The child got all but three per cent and a big red cross as a grade. As a teacher by training, I get miffed when I see such laziness and mediocrity from a fellow teacher.

If this homework was a history lesson about the evolution of technology, that would be great. But when you waste a child’s time and effort and go on to belittle them with a red marker pen for your unschooled teaching, it gets many of us worried. We wonder, do these teachers care? Do they care about the academic welfare of the children under their care?

I saw another teacher’s religious education homework. The instructions read, “Hold a crusade over the weekend, with the help of your parents, and report about it on Monday.” What is going on? Didn’t all the teachers go through re-tooling, so they could have an in-depth grasp of the Competency-Based Curriculum? Who is doing the reskilling? How are they evaluated?

While at it, the recent happenings of children being abused, missing, abducted, and cold murdered in arson and other vicious attacks speak of deep concerns about child neglect. This neglect is from the top government offices that should have systems of carrying out compliance checks, reporting, and acting against any form of abuse of a child’s rights and neglect.

Teaching our children about old-school televisions and radios while children in other parts of the world are learning and crafting their careers and futures around Artificial Intelligence is simply moronic. We might have overhauled the education system, but we also need to install new chips and rewire the thinking of some of the teachers and specifically, the school managers.

It is the same way we propagate and churn out old thinking about marriage. “Marriage is about being strong enough to withstand abuse. A husband might come home with a lot of stress from out there. A slap here and there is expected.” I kid you not, but this was a woman giving marital advice to a bride and groom on their wedding day. There were a few murmurs, but no one stopped her from her ill-advised preaching of gender-based violence.

While many people now realise that marriage is about building a friendship, working as a team and bequeathing a healthy legacy to the next generations, many others live by the old mantras that long stopped working. We all need retooling, to make violence unacceptable and criminal to demystify the myths that have seen families experience cycles of traumas.

For example, marriage is not about being paranoid of other women and keeping track of our husbands. A philanderer will philander, and that is not about you but about their character. Marriage is not about losing oneself or forgetting about your passions, gifts, and purpose. Marriage is not about mocking GOAT wives and sanitizing the mistress and the adulterous husband. Marriage is not about using the other person and milking them for all their worth.

Marriage is about building yourself and each other, about reskilling every day, unlearning, and learning new, healthy ways of relating. Marriage is about understanding that we are imperfect humans but putting in the effort, every second to be an excellent human for ourselves and our partner. Marriage is about upholding the scared vows of monogamy, if that is what you signed up for because three is a crowd when it comes to the marriage relationship. Marriage is about growth. When both of you show goodwill, you end up as accountability partners. You have each other’s backs, but you also keep challenging your spouse to be better, to pursue their dreams, and to realise their potential.

Marriage is also about adopting, just like technology, there are tools and belief systems that turn mediocre. You let go of those and stop worrying about what people think if they find you, an African man, singing a lullaby to your newborn.