Paper short abstract:

This paper tries to analyze and describe the practice of private tutoring in the socialist Romania after the 770 Decree (1966), which prohibited the contraceptive means. It explores how this policy of the state determined changes in the shape and dimension of the phenomenon of private tutoring.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper l analyze the practice of private tutoring as a "shadow" for the educational system (Bray; 2007), parallel with the formal system, but also as a form of the secondary economy, in the context of the paternalist state (Kornai: 1992, Verdery: 2003) . I describe and explain the mechanisms put in function by this type of practice and insert that "meditațiile" (private tutoring), beyond the economical dimension -a private market which was not recognized by the state-, involved also a component of symbolic nature. I speak about this elements of symbolic nature as a form of resistance to the internal contradiction between the promises of the communist ideology and the reality of the penury economy (Kornai, ibid.). Thus, I explore the direct connection between the intervention in natality of the state with the 770 Decree and the growth of the phenomenon of private lessons. I also map other implications of the centralized planning of the socialist state in shaping the way private tutoring evolved and took place under Ceausescu's regime.