Many kids today are horrific hellions in need of some discipline, the most motivating kind being physical. As a student I know of a few children that cause constant problems in class and do not develop obedience through the schools disciplinary system. Physical punishment is the least endurable and most effective correctional tool.
Everyone has gone somewhere public and had an experience with a child acting out who is not being properly dealt with by their emotionally defective parent. Tons of kids and adults alike were spanked while growing up and would attribute it to their current behavior. Enforcing rules with physical punishment has always been used until recently, and now the younger generations have as much patience and respect for the law as a crack whore.
Millions of detentions, Saturday schools and suspensions are issued each year in this country to constant offenders. These are the kids who consistently annoy, distract, or otherwise disrupt students. Teachers can only issue referrals to these people. For the most part the discipline comes from the parents from offenses like these, but more and more parents are not using effective forms of controlling these kids. When parents are raising below par children, it is the states duty to step in and turn that child into a productive member of society.
The purpose of punishment is to make the offender so dreadful of the consequences that they will never again commit that crime. For years punishment for law breaking was mostly physical, and was more effective than it is today. From this it is safe to assume that physical punishment is the most effective form. Being the most effective, it is only logical for it to be the most used, but because of sympathetic voters, and money hungry offenders, this tact is hardly used.
Instead of looking to new methods of discipline, I say everyone revert to the old, effective methods of punishment. Starting with the schools, reform of law should be implemented to allow teachers to physically punish children. It is the states duty to insure that the children be properly raised. Physical punishment is the only kind that will correct most of the nations youth.
However, being one who was "paddled" as a kid - and with a 'slotted' paddle to boot (makes it sting more), I can attest that it really wasn't much of a deterrent. Young guys like me took it as a 'right-of-passage' and took a bit of pride in taking it like a 'man.'
But, overall, today it wouldn't hurt - no pun intended - as long as you had a system to weed out the sadistic prick teachers.
Along about the sixth-grade, we had a teacher who made the boys do fifty push-ups as punishment. This was tougher - but it sure did help keep us in shape.