This study seeks to analyze the nature and extent of as well as the reasons for the private tutoringactivity practiced by fifty-one Romanian secondary education teachers. The findings of my research draw to the conclusion that, although undeniably present, material self-interest does not prevail in their work as private tutors. Instead, their chief goal has been consistently to gain more professional and social status - a goal challenged by successive regimes of contrasting political hues. While identifying the ways in which their work in schools has been "proletarianized" and in which the economic and the political have pervaded their teaching activities, they understand their private tutoring work as a critical solution in a critical period of transition in the Romanian society. This practice has grown into a very well organized, hierarchical system, which aims to recuperate an ideal type of relation teacher-student and to offer them authority, autonomy, prestige and economic rewards - exactly the elements that are at the heart of their ideals of "professionalism". Besides being a subtle answer to the education policy changes, private tutoring is a momentous attempt at re-legitimating their profession and restoring their professional and social images
