FYI – in public schools it has been forbidden to hit children since at least the 1950s (personal experience here), except maybe in parts of the South, where violence among adults was also considered normal.
Check out R. Rosenblum.s biography of R’ Yaakov Kamenetsky, on his time as a melamed in a small European town. He was criticized by the parents because he never hit, yet the children learned even better for him. There were no “Western sensibilities” involved, just the instincts of a true rebbe.