The Shadow Education System of Reproducing Elite Status in Bangladesh

• In Event: Presidential Invited Session: Shadow Education in Asia: Complexities and Dynamics in Access and Equity

Proposal

Education has long been regarded as the ‘great equalizer’. Through a quality education, children of any background are thought to have an equal shot at success. But is this still the case when, after the school day ends, certain students engage in private tutoring?

When tutoring is demanded by specific social classes, it is viewed by many scholars as a significant unequalizer — magnifying social stratifications and contributing to reproduction of class privileges. From a social reproduction perspective, private tutoring can be seen as a way for the middle classes to translate economic capital into additional cultural capital. Such reproduction of privileges through the use of tutoring by already privileged families provides credence to Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital’s inequitable influence on education. This is the theoretical framework employed by this study.

In Bangladesh, the penetration of private tutoring runs deep, with 40% of primary school students and 68% of secondary students receiving tutoring, and participation skyrocketing to over 80% for students in the tenth grade. More prosperous classes benefit disproportionately from their ability to pay for private learning.

This study, based on findings from the presenter’s dissertation research, explores why Bangladeshi students who already enjoy significant privileges in their education, such as successfully navigating private schools, engage in shadow education. Through a critical investigation of private tutoring centers as a social site of the reproduction of elite status, the paper broadens the critical discourse on the educational mechanisms through which those of the upper class are socialized. This approach contrasts with other research on private tutoring in Bangladesh which focuses narrowly on the micro-economic determinants of tutoring, and on English in particular. In a context that is understandably dominated by research on those who are marginalized, studying the ways of being of students in elite educational settings, and the practices of their tutors, is crucial to uncover the social dynamics of inequality across the system. This is the intersection in which this presentation is located.

The research questions guiding the work are:
1. How do relationships between students, their peers, and their tutors influence the socialization of students as members of an elite group?
2. How do students enact, negotiate, or challenge the reproduction of their elite status in private tutoring spaces?

The study employs a case study approach with mixed methods including classroom observations, interviews, a social media review and a survey to undertake a critical analysis of the emergence and use of shadow education in urban Bangladesh.

Author

• Nisma Elias, University of Minnesota- Twin Cities