• Guster@lemmy.world
    231·
    1 year ago

    It should be illegal for lectures to sell their own book as part of the course lol, I saw that happen a few times back then

    • 👽🍻👽@lemmy.world
      7·
      1 year ago

      While I totally agree with you, this meme isn’t referring to college text books. It’s referring to school supplies and clothes for elementary school children.

      The vast majority of public schools in the US are severely underfunded and don’t have enough supplies like markers, disinfectant, crayons, pencils, etc to provide kids and teachers don’t make very much money, yet they often come out of pocket to buy supplies. What has happened as a result, is parents have to purchase many of these supplies to send to school with their kids for the whole classroom to have the items they need. I have three kids in kindergarten and second grade. Their school supply lists were about $150 each. With creative shopping for sales, we managed to get everything about $150 cheaper than listed. We are waiting for the tax-free weekend to buy clothes for all of them.

      Gotta love the good ol’ US of A and it’s hatred of the poors.

      • Sanctus@crystals.restEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        This infuriates me every year. I always vote for education budget increases and allocations and shit and nothing ever changes. Almost everythhing passes the buck to the individual citizen and its insane.

    • ohlaph@lemmy.world
      6·
      1 year ago

      It really should be illegal. Especially when they rearrange some text and call it a new book and require that new book every other term.

      Scum of the earth.

    • the_itsb (she/her)@midwest.socialEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      In the US, in the weeks leading up to the new school year starting late August/early September, many retailers will offer discounts on school supplies - paper, pencils and pens, backpacks, etc - to attract customers. Many clothing retailers market it to students as a great time for a wardrobe refresh or to reinvent your look entirely and offer discounts. Same deal with electronics, especially since higher math courses tend to have required calculators. Some states - including Ohio, where I live - offer a sales tax holiday on a weekend during this season to help with the expense involved.

      It’s wicked expensive with just one kid, I can’t imagine having several.

        • KreekyBonez@lemm.ee
          3·
          1 year ago

          more of a “back to putting off work from school” sale

          I used to rush to do my homework in between classes and on the bus, to make more time for short SNES games. I can’t imagine what it’s like for kids, now that they have enormous open-world games to distract them.

      • yimby@lemmy.ca
        5·
        1 year ago

        And this is the second biggest shopping season of the year, only beat by Christmas.

    • aradon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      4·
      1 year ago

      It’s the time in America at the end of summer when the “back to school” list’s come out for each grade of each school.

      • korstmos@kbin.social
        9·
        1 year ago

        Every book has a unique number used to identify them, the ISBN (International Standard Book Number). If you can figure out the ISBN of a book, it becomes an easy search term for piracy, because now you aren’t looking for a long title, you’re looking for a unique number!
        Most bookstores will list the ISBN of a book on their website, so that step should be pretty easy.

        Then to commit the piracy, you can often just google the ISBN + filetype:pdf and get a free PDF pretty frequently.
        There is also library genesis (libgen), where you can look up pirated books via their ISBN, which has a super wide selection.
        And if even libgen does not have it, you can try torrent trackers (read up more on !piracy )

        Of course most of those options are legally questionable or illegal depending on where you live, and I of course would not recommend you actually perform them ;)