eBay prohibits textbooks for homeschool teachers
A new policy by Internet trading behemoth eBay that bans homeschool teachers’ texts from its auctions is prompting a tirade of complaints from the company’s faithful customers.
“Really the homeschooling community is a huge participant in eBay when you get to thinking about it,” said one customer who was identified as ”angels*wings” on an eBay blog. “We buy textbooks naturally but we also purchase items like microscopes, slides, globes, maps, manipulatives, educational games, reading books, supplies for our classrooms … stickers, idea books, folders, sheet protectors, school supplies, software, educational movies, models, post cards … the list is enormous.”
The policy, which is inclusive of all teachers’ texts, was made known recently as those who were auctioning various books watched as their postings were deleted.
There’s nothing wrong with home school. If that’s your thing it doesn’t bother me. If the kid is handicapped, going to school could be difficult or impossible so home school is a good way to go. Vic is just attacking for the sake of being mean. Back to the future with textbooks or back to the topic. Ebay is making a huge mistake by doing what they are doing. The good news is that there are ways around Ebay on this and they don’t want the business anyway. Some companies and schools would gladly donate books for the needs of home school teachers. A large online book exchange would allow people to swap unneeded books for books that could be used by others. Shipping via USPS media rate keeps costs down and everybody has an easier time finding books they can use. It seems like a good solution.
Uncle Jim
What? Your cute little anecdote is a little ambiguous.
??? I just thought it was corny.
J. you have posted everything I wished to say. Thank you for doing it so well.
***
Michael O’Conner, once again you are making totally weird, outlandish comments. Could you PLEASE back up any of your blather with some citations?
As for the quality of public vs private schools? This study found public schools better in math at grades 4 and 8.
http://tinyurl.com/q9wjl
What is a comdom? Did you mean condom? And what the hell is wrong with advising children to use condoms if they have sex. When contraception use (especially prophylactic devices) is strongly encouraged along with abstinence, the spread of disease and unwanted pregnancies are much lower.
http://tinyurl.com/muu8h
So for said family why can they not do home schooling and why are they being discrimintated against.
It is very simple. As a society, we all have a vested interest in the children growing up educated. If the children are taught by parents as poorly educated as you suggest, the children will end up just as stupid. Children are not property, owned by the parents. Children are the ones that choose which nursing home to put you in.
Michael, first, get a life, then get laid. You will feel much better about yourself later.
Back in high school, we found a teacher’s edition of our math textbook in the library and my friend checked it out. She would’ve gotten away with it if she didn’t run out of renewals. Once the librarian had to generate the renewal notice, and looked at the title, the gig was up.
Even though my friend swears she only used it to check her answers, she got in trouble for it and the book was pulled from student circulation.
I can quite understand disallowing teachers’ editions of textbooks from eBay for just that reason.
eBay can do what it wants…..thats it’s right as a private company. If the home school teachers(which should be parents) wish these materials, they are available on many sites at as good a price as eBay.
When my Mother started home schooling my oldest brother, he’s 38 now, it was not the best of times for homeschooling and getting books and materials was very tough. Most school districts refused to help you with anything. You were literally on your own. But she did it and did it well, none of us(there are 4 boys) have ever had our options limited by being home schooled. In fact, home schooling is what prepared me for University in England, where self- study and analytical ability is essential for students…..something lacking in most American students from public schools.
#8….J…….there are many studies that have been done on home schooled versus public school compareing the quality of the education both get. Even some done by the teachers unions that they weren’t happy to get the results of, as it showed that home schooled was as well and usually better educated.
Several univerities around the world and here in the U.S. welcome home schooled with open arms. I attend the most prestigious University in the world and it only took me 2 years after *graduating* from Mom’s home school to be accepted into it, in one of the most difficult degree programs they offer. My oldest brother has an MBA from the University of Arizona and runs a multi-million dollar agri- business, my next oldest brother has his MBA from Harvard and runs his own multi-million dollar brokerage firm, my brother just above me in age has his MD from University of Arizona and his PhD in Genetic Research from Stanford University, and I graduated from Oxford University with my law degree and am able to practice law in the U.K. and will be attending Oxford again this October for my advanced degree in Enviromental law and animal habitat……we are not social misfits….but we are all home schooled.
Oh…..and there are now over 1 million home schooled children in the U.S. alone, thats 2.2% of all school age,…..thats a lot of business for ebay to just toss off……it’s their right, but methinks it’s a very foolish move on their part.
And for *j*….this is the satistics from 2003 on home schooling versus public schooling.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Academic findings
The academic effectiveness of home education is largely a settled issue. Numerous studies have confirmed the academic integrity of home education programs, demonstrating that on average, home-educated students outperform their publicly-run school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects. Moreover, the performance gaps between minorities and gender that plague publicly-run schools are virtually non-existent amongst home-educated students.[13]
Some critics argue that while home-educated students generally do extremely well on standardized tests[14], such students are a self-selected group whose parents care strongly about their education and would also do well in a conventional school environment.
Some opponents argue that parents with little training in education are less effective in teaching. However, some studies do indicate that parental income and education level affect home-educated student performance on standardized tests very little.
Home-educated student curricula often include many subjects not included in traditional curricula. Some colleges find this an advantage in creating a more academically diverse student body, and proponents argue this creates a more well-rounded and self-sufficient adult. Increasingly, colleges are recruiting home-educated students; many colleges accept equivalency diplomas as well as parent statements and portfolios of student work as admission criteria; others also require SATs or other standardized tests. Some opponents argue that home education curricula often exclude critical subjects and isolate the student from the rest of society, or presents them with their parents’ ideological world views – especially religious ones – rather than the worldviews (characterised as secular humanism) sanctioned to be taught at state schools.
The results of home education with gifted and learning-disabled children have not been as thoroughly studied.
[rest of post deleted due to extreme length — this area is for comments, not full articles]
any textbook publisher in America will sell anyone the teachers edition…what’s the big deal here?
But, back in MY DAY…we just would steal them off the teachers desk. Sheesh!
Ebays reasoning is not as bad as the headline makes it seem. Still, it seems like a non-solution to the problem of cheating which hurts a lot of people and doesn’t really solve anything.
How many students buy teachers editions to cheat? Very few, I’m guessing. Very very few.
The teachers editions that I remember seeing (they were not guarded in my public school) were not the same as leaked tests or term-papers for sale.
I do remember example tests in the teacher’s edition but I don’t think our teachers used those. (if they did, they’re bad teachers.)
#8 >>”It is the higher education that a homeschooler receives”
>> Can you show me the scientific evidence to that please?
I have always been under the impression that home schoolers generally do better than public school kids. But I realize I’ve mostly heard that from pro-homeschoolers.
I found this one (seemingly objective) survey of the research from the International Review of Education.
>> One study concludes that home-schooled children have neither an advantage nor a disadvantage (Tipton 1990). Three studies show home-schooled children to be at a small-to-medium advantage (ACT; Calvery et al. 1992; Sutton and Oliveira 1995). One study points to a medium advantage (Galloway 1995). Of the remaining three studies, one indicates a medium-to-large advantage (Rudner 1999), the other two a large advantage (Ray 1994, 1997).
http://www.alternative-learning.org/sal/performance-in-homeschooling.pdf
ALL
depends on the teacher, and HOW they teach…
#38, joshua, sorry, but I think your whole post is bogus. As is your habit, you throw numbers around with no regard to where they came from. Is this what you learned to do being home schooled or did you learn it at your prestigious university? If you can’t cite your source, don’t expect to be taken seriously. I won’t research your material for you.
Another advantage to citing your source is the editors don’t cut all the meat from your argument. Then again, do you expect anyone to read a paper here at DU?
#41, GregAllen, sorry, but I can not seriously consider any study as unbiased that openly purports in the title:
Performance in Home Schooling; An Argument Against Compulsory Education in the Netherlands.
My only concern about “home schooling” is whether it’s goal is a thorough well rounded education or attempt to brainwash children by limiting their exposure to knowledge/alternate ideas while constantly hammering home the parents “moral” belief system. If their “education” focus is largely religious teachings that cause them to be sequestered from their peers/society then it is more parental misconduct than “school”.
OTOH, the one aspect of home education that I think is valuable is being segregated from the opposite sex while you’re trying to learn. I did very well until I hit puberty. After that, it was very difficult to concentrate on the teachers and homework. : )
You folks have been busy
I have been trying to get some objective data on Home Schooling. What I find on ~95% of the links is within the first paragraph the discussion of God and religion come up. So lets stop pretending it is about education. It is about indoctrination! Look up those two words. They have different meanings.
Now back to the topic of the post
Ebay is not required to allow those books to be sold. It is not discrimination because they apply it to everyone! If you want to take on the challenge of HS then good for you but don’t expect special treatment like discounts because you can’t afford to by the books at full price. This is what the public school system has been complaining about for years. Where were you when they said they need to raise taxes to improve the schools?
If you can’t afford the books Tough! Get a job! because you obviously have enough time to spend preaching to your children about god Then go and send your kids to school!
Setting aside all the debate about homeschooling and how best to test and help students learn…
The teacher in the original article made the point that she has to present her credentials as a teacher before the publisher will sell her a teacher’s edition textbook. That means that this item is restricted in who it can be sold to. Ebay doesnt want to be a party to violating that restriction. Rather than accept responsibility for IDing teachers, they simply decline to carry the item.
You can argue the wisdom of allowing publishers to restrict sales of these books. From Ebay’s perspective, however, it’s a logical decision. The headline makes it sound like Ebay has some kind of vendetta against homeschoolers.
Surely the solution is to have teachers that know the material they are teaching. Make the test papers a separate thing. It is madness to assume that the answers to standard text published questions does not get out. The internet almost demands that standard questons and answers are published – we need to educate the young to think and gain knowledge – not just know how to answer standard questions.
This is not meant to put down teachers but a system like this surely must lower the bar.
joshua
The first one has no data on how the education compares.
The second one is wikipedia. LOL
The third one “Rudner” Does have a credible source except you should have read it.
From that study
“this group of home school parents has more formal education than parents in the general population; the median income for home school families is significantly higher than that of all families with children in the United States”
Not true of all home school parents. Just this group.
“Because this was not a controlled experiment, the study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools and the results must be interpreted with caution.”
Wow great link to back up your argument.
AND The last link Can you say BIAS!
Geez J….I guess all those little sub titles along the left side of the page on the first link are blank…or maybe you couldn’t read that that many words, since you seemed to miss large portions of my post.
I did mention that one of the sources was a wikipedia article and it showed some bias, but had some good links. And the socialization part of the Wiki article cites federal goverment studies. And are more up to date than Rudner.
Apparently you work for either a politician or CNN as a day job. I know this because you cherry picked parts of sentences as well as parts of paragraghs, but forgot to mention the whole of the paragraghs or sentences or for that matter the entirety of the article itself. The whole states that homeschooled were far above average in the Iowa tests and SAT’s. And yes, it also said that the parents weren’t poor, but I didn’t realize this discussion had gone into economics.
And I do believe, if I can read my own typing that I gave the name and purpose of the third link. But that link has links to goverment sponsored studies.
All in all, you fail the test. While your ability to pick and choose should get you a job at the daily Kos along side Mr. Fusion.
joshua
Those little sub tittles along the left side of the first page hyperlink jump to different parts of the same article. They don’t include any information on how home school children compare to public school children the last one is a PDF which also does not contain any comparative information about the education.
You obviously didn’t read your own post but that is par for the course.
“I did mention that one of the sources was a wikipedia article and it showed some bias, but had some good links.”
So instead of putting the wikpedia link why didn’t you just link directly to those links? Considering there are hundreds of links on the wikpedia page most of which link back to wikpedia. I shouldn’t have to do your work for you. Most of the research links at the bottom are for pro home school websites So quite being dense
“Apparently you work for either a politician or CNN as a day job. ”
No I don’t and yet you seem to “KNOW” I do. Typical right wing religious zealot!
“the study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools and the results must be interpreted with caution” THEY SAID IT NOT ME!!!!
It is you that is cherry picking only what you want to see in the report. The authors of the report say to INTERPRET WITH CAUTION!! That means everything in the report!! Not just the data that doesn’t agree with your conclusion!
What they did is called a disclaimer! They do it so people like you don’t try to use it as proof.
“And yes, it also said that the parents weren’t poor, but I didn’t realize this discussion had gone into economics”
You must have been home schooled because you don’t understand what a research sample represents.
“And I do believe, if I can read my own typing that I gave the name and purpose of the third link. But that link has links to government sponsored studies.”
Once again! Why did you not list them instead? I shouldn’t have to do your work for you.
Ebay’s policy is ridiculous. You can buy these homeschool items all across the land NEW. These items aren’t used in Public Schools as they aren’t PC or dumbed down. Most homeschool teachers have the answer books, but they are SMART enough to keep them away from their children. I guess we should just buy the student’s edition, then let everyone guess if the answers are correct. Better yet, there are no wrong answers, as that would just hurt student self-esteem.
This action is most likely pushed for by publishers of new curriculum, in my opinion. You can get around the policy by putting “Parent Guide” on the listing.