WARNING: THE FACTUAL BASIS FOR THIS POST MAY NOT EXIST (SEE THE COMMENTS).
I suppose all you homeschoolers out there already know that has declared textbooks to be “contraband” so that you can no longer buy or sell homeschool materials. It will be tempting to use lobbying of some sort to try to reverse this backwards piece of corporate fascist policy.
But I hope instead, homeschoolers will simply dispense with Ebay altogether and let someone else profit from providing them with freedom of trade. Here are two options:
Why go through extra effort because of some local internet tyrant? Just do what you would do anyway and let the resulting market force punish Ebay.
Yep, I haven’t posted a word about, and I quit reading the hysterical “Ebay is discriminating against homeschoolers” blog posts weeks ago.
OK, but by “hysterical” do you mean the story itself is inaccurate? Or are you just talking about the reaction?
I don’t get it. From your link all it says is that teacher’s editions are prohibited. Why is that a problem? It makes a lot of sense to me. I know the publisher place rather high restrictions on who can receive these. For teacher’s editions and answer keys to be easily accessible, a publisher would risk the integrity of the entire run.
My sister has helped write several math textbook answer keys for some publishers (her part-time job) and the restrictions they place on these texts is pretty rigid.
The rule is being applied to homeschool curriculum Wayne. As I said, homeschooler should simply ignore Ebay and move on with their own sites.
Well, homeschoolers really ought to be careful with what they do with their teacher editions. I know some publishers are really weary of TEDs being sold to homeschoolers as it is. If a homeschooler puts one up on ebay, any student can snatch it up. “The powers that be” should create some sort of ‘true homeschool parents only’ section where curriculum could be purchased.
I understand the situation of the homeschoolers, I’ve taught a number of homeschool students. However, homeschool parents should be responsible with what they do with the TEDs. It really costs the companies a lot of money to create a curriculum and if forced to do so over and over again, they could take it out on the poor, little, consumer, or go out of bus. altogether.
Unfortuantely, a few rotten apples spoil the entire bunch, or some apt phrase like that.
There really isn’t any such thing as “homeschooler curriculum.” Any commercial curriculum that comes with a teachers edition could also be used in a school, and many are used in private schools.
Also, there is a tendency among homeschoolers to expect the entire world to bend over and make allowances for the fact that we are doing something unusual. Homeschoolers are a self-selected minority, and occasionally we get screwed when decisions made for the other 97% of the country affect us adversely. That’s life, get over it. My wife was buying and selling curriculum online before Ebay even existed. It’s just not that big of a deal.
Not only will I not be boycotting Ebay – we have a live auction up now. If anybody needs a large lot of size 7/8 girls clothes… 😉