SCHOOL BOYS’ STRIKE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 11928, 23 October 1919, Page 2

SCHOOL BOYS’ STRIKE.

Because they only got two days’ leave for bank holiday, while their fathers are having a week’s rest, the boys of the upper forms of the Braintree (Essex) Church Elementary School went on strike when the school reopened, marching out of the classrooms shouting, “We’ll have a week’s holiday like father” All thoyvorks at Braintree were closed for a week and the council ■school was closed for six weeks, but the children of the church school, according to precedent, have three weeks’ holiday at the peapicking time, and again three weeks at the harvest. The girls and younger boys remained in school, but all efforts by the assistant teachers to get the big boys -back [to their lessons failed. They held a demonstration in the street outside the school, and then marched, singing, to the river, where they paddled and fished during the morning. After dinner there was a noisy demonstration outside the school. Parental discipline had operated in many cases,, and half the boy strikers returned to school amidst the “boos” of those who remained out. The processsion, very much depleted, formed up for the river, with cries of, “We won’t go to school this week.”