Teaching and trading: Local voices and global issues from Central Asia

Abstract

This paper is based on an analysis of data gathered through two qualitative studies conducted by the authors in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, I accompanied by our continuous involvement in, and reflections on, the transformation process in the region, as well as by our review of other studies of education and society done by international agencies (e.g., Khorog Joint Research Team, 2001; Kuder, 1996), and individual scholars (Humphrey, 2002; Keshavjee, 1998; Ries, 2002). The paper presents a complex picture of teachers' life and work in Central Asia. It examines how teachers are seeking various means for survival and coping with the multiple challenges they face in their everyday practices, In particular, we discuss the role of trade and trading in teachers' lives, hoW and why they become traders, what effect it has on their lives and practices, and what are the implications of this impoverishment and intensification for education and society in Central Asia. The collapse of the USSR, one of the most dramatic events of the 20th century, has hit teachers, who had seemed to be at the top of the social ladder in the communist system, hardest; it demoted them to the bottom of the social hierarchy in the new market-oriented post-Soviet landscape. Faced with enormous economic, social, and psychological hardships of life and work, a great number of teachers became traders, leaving their teaching jobs partially, or even completely, in order to make a. living. Thus, for many teachers, trading has become an important weapon in their struggle for survival. Trading, in other words, has not only offered a way out for teachers, but has also become a profession that affects their status, position, values and reasons for teaching. Their success, as well as the increasing apathy of officials towards the teachers' plight, has made those who remain in the profession also see trading: and commercial businesses as a way out of the poverty, while maintaining their dignity and also continuing the teaching to which, for a variety of reasons, they remain committed.