Comics and those Annuals from ‘Home’ which an Aunt sent me for birthdays and Christmas, often had a school story or two. Beatings were usually light-hearted affairs as in the Billy Bunter stories.
The reality was different. A beating hurt. Our high school punishments were always on the clothed backside. This was just part of the strict, authoritarian form of teaching where boys sat with arms folded on the desks in front of them and spoke only when asked a question by a master.
Today, boys are suspended from school. Their bad behaviour rewarded with a holiday. What sort of message does that send? There was nothing ambiguous about a sore bottom.
Most lads of my generation left school with a decent education which helped a very great deal during adult life. One or two of us became fixated on corporal punishment but the majority did not.
I think CP is probably best relegated to history books, given the glowing spinster and that red-faced teacher of my youth. Besides, can you imagine any lad in 2003 cooperating by bending over, the way we did?