By Isle of Wight Observer
The IW Observer of October 26, 1889, reported that Ryde schoolboys were threatening to strike over excessive homework and corporal punishment, with one planned protest narrowly avoided.
We are informed that the boys at some of the Ryde Board Schools have been within an ace of following the example of the boys further north. Their special aversion is the home lesson, and they say that there has been so much striking on the part of the masters that it is time the boys turned round and had a strike on their own account.
At one school it is said the boys had made all the arrangements for a demonstration, had the master caned any of them for not doing home lessons, but (as it happened) the master was not quite so strict as usual. The delinquents were let off with a reprimand, and so the intended demonstration was abandoned.
We must say we sympathise with the boys to a great extent, especially if they have tasks assigned them which (as we are assured is often the case) take two or more hours to satisfactorily execute, so that they have hardly any time for recreation. On the other hand we must remember that the masters are bound by an iron code, and their work is more anxious and arduous than ever it was. Tact, impartiality and firmness, however, will overcome great difficulties.