>>16508650Both my parents and grandparents said that corporal punishment at school was useful to straighten out kids that were acting up and making life miserable for other kids.
The downside they said was that there were always a few fuckers that just gave you a hiding not because you did anything wrong, but just because they could (got some kind of sadist kick from it). My own father's hands were covered in cane marks on certain for basically nothing (teacher would just lash out like a psycho). His parents then kept going in to have a stern word with them and it'd stop. He also said you were pretty much screwed if your parents were alcoholics and shit like that because the teachers knew they could just keep beating those children because the parents would never come in and complain about it.
Also, when I was little the head master of the school was an oldfag that told us stories like how they used to deal with the sadist teachers when he was at school. Whenever a cane broke they used to send the children to buy the replacements. The children used to run a thin metal rod through the inside of it to hollow it out and weaken it, so it would break again. They got away with this for a long time before they got wise to it (taking off the plastic cap at the bottom and checking it for a hole). Other methods included soaking the middle part in water and then letting it dry out by the fire.