CS was correct. Corporal punishment was never an effective educational tool. For that matter, shaming a child is also not an educational tool. And most of the time, kids react poorly to this infringement on their person.
But before the self-righteous wolves start attacking me about the Rambam and Shulchan Aruch, I must qualify. There is a limited place for discipline in schools. Once the greatest concentration is about the rules and the consequences, we have stopped teaching and the students have stopped learning. The true message of the beauty of Torah and Mitzvos cannot be learned in such an environment.
I have quoted before that there are treasures of seforim from the gedolim of the past many generations about chinuch (some authored seforim, others collected an anthology). Most of them address the subject, and I would turn to them for guidance on this subject. There are zero seforim who approach hitting as a good thing. At the most, they acknowledge that it can be a last resort. They also list prerequisite conditions. The rebbe/teacher cannot be angry, the “punishment” must teach not punish, all other forms of intervention have been exhausted, etc. If these criteria are not met, the pronouncement of these gedolim is, “רשע למה תכה רעך”, as this an aveiro, not a mitzvah. The Brisker Rov stated that under very specific and limited conditions, the first potch can be excused, but the second one is an aveiro – Min Hatorah! This is not a contemporary, secular, liberal mind.
What is most sad here is that a good rebbe/teacher makes lessons interesting enough that there is hardly a role for discipline. It is not an easy job, and definitely not handled by someone whose experience is just kollel study. Planning lessons is no quick task, and having learned the material is not enough to teach it.
How many readers here can cite the second half of the posuk without looking it up? חושך שבטו שונא בנו. Most would expect it to tell us that the one who truly loves the child should beat the daylights out of him. Rav Wolbe ZT”L points this out. I won’t kill the punchline. Go look it up. משלי י”ג כ”ד.