Corporal Punishment is still legal in America, the only industrialized nation on the planet where it is in fact still legal.
In fact, Wikipedia says that, in Europe, corporal punishment in schools is legal in France and in the Czech Republic, both of which are (1) industrialized, and (2) on the planet.
More seriously, it does seem to me that this article is another polemic which, using the claim research studies show that corporal punishment leads to higher rates of absenteeism and lower academic achievement, ignores the serious question of whether this is true of careful, measured levels of corporal punishment (I would certainly imagine it to be true of abusive CP, but no sensible person would support that).
Incidentally, the putative response “But all CP is abusive”, which the ignorant might offer in return, is just begging the question. Anyone who says that CP is by definition abusive is pretending to be Humpty Dumpty and misusing the word “abusive”. If I though that in fact nearly all CP was abusive, then I would oppose it; but that would need strong empirical evidence.