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It gets better....
E-Bay Bans Homeschool Textbooks
Unfortunately it appears that eBay has sided with the education establishment and against homeschoolers. According to its website, “multiple organizations and publishers have voiced their concern” that eBay permits teaching manuals and teacher’s texts, including those used by homeschoolers, to be sold through its website.
In response to these complaints, eBay enacted a new policy banning homeschool teachers’ texts from its auctions. Many homeschoolers were notified of this new policy only when their listings were deleted from eBay’s website.
"They told me that it fell under their heading of 'illegal, dangerous, offensive, or potentially infringing,'" said one homeschooler. "What are they thinking? 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."
Although eBay defends its policy stating that teacher’s textbooks contain “special answer keys, exams, teaching tips, and guides” that should not be available to the public, it is clear that the homeschool community has been, and will continue to be, discriminated against as a result of the policy.
"As a homeschooler I believe this directly discriminates against me since I have used eBay numerous times to both buy and sell homeschool curricula. As a budget conscious homeschooling mother I like to buy used materials as often as possible. This means buying the teacher's materials used on eBay and purchasing new workbooks directly from the publisher or distributor," said another homeschooler.
“The public school establishment has opposed homeschool freedom from the very beginning,” said Karen England of Capitol Resource Institute. “As homeschooling has grown throughout the years, the opposition has only become more intense.”
“We urge eBay to reconsider its discriminatory policy and permit homeschool parents to again be able to order teaching texts through its website.”
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