Back in my parents' day corporal punishment wasn't even reserved for when kids did wrong. My father was left-handed, and when he was in primary school (in the 1920s & 30s) they did NOT want children learning to write with their left hands, or being left-handed at all. So the teachers would whack the kids' hands with rulers if they caught them writing left-handed. Utterly barbaric, and yet some societies still refuse to acknowledge that left-handedness is valid (usually for hygiene reasons).

!PIMP
!PIZZA