Home School Group Has Answer for eBay's Teacher's Edition Textbook Ban
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
September 1, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is expressing concern that eBay has banned the sale of teacher's guides through its online auctions, a move that could drive up the cost of instructional materials for home-schooling families. The new eBay policy prohibits "the sale of teacher's editions of textbooks and solutions manuals that are intended solely for use by teachers." The online auction site says the policy is designed to prevent people from making illegal copies of the teacher's guides. However, the ban has drawn the ire of many home educators.
Mike Smith, president of the HSLDA, says he has tried unsuccessfully to convince eBay to drop its ban and trust that home schoolers would not make illegal copies. His organization sees eBay's new policy as a real problem, he explains, "because it's really expensive to have to buy all new textbooks all the time." However, eBay was unmoved, so the home-schooling group has had to come up with its own creative solution.
"What we've done as a members' benefit," Smith says, "is we are going to have a kind of 'eBay' where folks can sell [used] textbooks with the teacher's guide." After all, he stresses, "That's the reason we're basically looking into doing this; because, obviously, this is going to become much more expensive to [our members] if they have to buy new textbooks in order to get a teacher's guide."
So, in a few weeks, the home-schooling advocate says, HSLDA will begin providing an alternative to eBay for its members. This is a welcome solution for home-schooling families, many of whom were troubled to learn of eBay's new policy, he observes. "A teacher's guide has the answers to the questions," Smith says. "It has a lot of good information. It's a lot thinner than the actual textbook, of course."
Schools, with their sizeable budgets and ability to buy in bulk, often receive special discounts, promotional and review copies, and various "freebies" as incentives from textbook publishers. Therefore schools, particularly public and larger private schools, are able to afford new textbooks every year or so with teacher editions included.
But for home-schooling families, Smith points out, "the teachers, which are the parents, teach the course. They want to have the benefit of the teacher's guide, and that's what the problem is -- they can't get it." The cost of new textbooks and instructional guides are often prohibitive for anyone looking to buy only one copy, which is why online trading services like eBay have been so important to home educators in the past.
A WorldNetDaily article on eBay's new policy points out that the home-schooling community has been, in one blogger's words, "a huge participant" in the Internet commerce giant's revenue stream. With home educators going online to purchase not only textbooks but software, maps, educational games, models, manipulatives, and more, the online commentator remarked, "the list is enormous."
Meanwhile, home schoolers who have been used to "recycling" educational materials they do not need anymore by selling them on eBay have also lost out. Another blogger quoted in the WorldNetDaily report lamented, "I have a mess of curriculum here that I can't sell, and needing money from it to buy curriculum for the new school year."
Smith believes the Home School Legal Defense Association's new online trading service will help members answer their needs for cost-effective exchange of instructional materials, including the buying and selling of much-needed teacher's guides. By allowing the resale of these instructor's editions and guides through private, affiliates-only auctions, the HSLDA spokesman asserts, "we can have assurance that the folks who are buying them are members, and we know they're responsible."
