The Diverse Functions of Supplemental Education: Acquisition of Symbolic Capital in Amdo Tibet

• In Event: Shadow Education in a Digital Age: Evolving Provision, Diverse Function, and Varying Effect

Proposal

Framework
If so many Tibetans critique schooling in China, why do so many persistently participate in supplemental education programs (Tibetan: sabjong) that appear to mimic the very schools they criticize? Scholars often conceptualize supplemental programs as ‘shadow’ education that provides instruction in what is ‘taught and tested’ in school, bracketing out programs that provide ‘instruction for differentiated demand’. However, others have emphasized the importance of acquiring valuable dispositions and knowledges beyond the explicit curriculum of mainstream school, especially for students whose home cultures are marginalized therein. To understand the role(s) that supplementation plays in ethnolinguistically minoritized communities one must analyze their potentially diverse functions. This paper therefore responds to the question: How is (educationally valuable) cultural capital conceptualized by Tibetan educators and how does sabjong facilitate its acquisition?

Methods
I conducted eighteen months of ‘extended case’ ethnographic research in Qinghai, China, comprising 70 days of participant observation and 101 interviews with parents, students, and supplemental and mainstream educators. Observations attended to what sabjong teachers reward/punish, how time outside the classroom is used, and how educators served as ‘cultural guides’. Interviews probed perspectives on what dispositions and knowledges are acquired at sabjong and what makes them valuable.

Findings
First, it is sometimes through deviating from - rather than ‘shadowing’ - mainstream education that sabjong facilitates the acquisition of dominant cultural and non-dominant cultural capital valuable in school and beyond (Carter 2005). While mainstream teachers must ‘teach to the test’ and avoid ethno-politically sensitive issues, sabjong educators were able to transmit ‘extracurricular’ knowledges that are nevertheless vital to success in mainstream schooling, such as how to navigate transitions to university or cope with racial discrimination.
Second, sabjong educators also modeled ethnically desirable ways to acquire dominant cultural capital, emphasizing that capital ought to be acquired not merely for the benefits it has for the individual (i.e., “instrumentally”) but ultimately for the positive impact it has on the ethnic group (i.e., “altruistically”). Educators thereby maintained ethnic distinctions from mainstream Chinese culture and schooling, which they saw as instrumentalist and individualistic, and modeled for students how to acquire dominant cultural capital in ways that do not devalue or further minoritize Tibetan ways of being and knowing.
Finally, sabjong serves as important site for capital acquisition for teachers as well. By organizing and volunteering at sabjong, teachers put their capital to work for the community, thus demonstrating their acquisition and use of dominant and non-dominant cultural capital is altruistic, and, therefore, deserved. By showing that the expertise and status they have acquired serve the community - rather than individualistic goals - teachers legitimated their cultural capital, thereby enhancing their symbolic capital.

Significance
These findings elaborate Bourdieusian theory both on the dynamics of symbolic capital among minoritized populations in authoritarian states and on the role capital plays in maintaining ethnic boundaries in ‘schooled societies’. This demonstrates the complexity and culturally generative nature of some programs that do much more than ‘shadow’ mainstream schooling.

Author

• Andrew David Frankel, Denison University