Maryland, 1990s-2000s (graduated 2005). Corporal punishment was banned statewide when I was in 1st grade and I never saw nor heard anything about it, much less being subjected to it myself. My parents would have raised a hell of a fuss, anyway.
South Carolina grade school in the early 1980s. It was used fairly frequently (never happened to me). The severity of the offense merited either 1, 3, or at a maximum of 5 “licks.” Individual teachers kept a wooden paddle and could administer it how they chose. Usually it was done bent over the teacher’s desk while the class watched. If you had a little old lady as a teacher, it didn’t matter because she would go get the gym teacher to blister some rear end.
Move to West Virginia in the late 1980s. Corporal punishment was technically legal here, but it was administered almost like the death penalty is in most states. To be eligible, you had to do something really, really bad, numerous times, then have the parents called, have the parents agree to the punishment, do the same bad thing again, get approval from the local school board, wait 24 hours (so it wasn’t done in anger) and then finally the paddle would come out, and it could only be administered by the principal. As you would expect, it rarely happened. I saw it done twice in the 9 years in school here.
It was eventually completely done away with after I graduated.
Catholic grammar school in the 50s- it was available but rarely used. My daughter started school in the late 80s in central Illinois, and if parents did not want their child to have corporal punishment, they needed yo write a letter to the principal. I wrote the letter, but I also volunteered in the school and never saw it used on anyone. Since then the district abolished corporal punishment.
My husband was a PE teacher in high school in The Chicago area in the mid-late sixties, and not only was it common, but they often called on him to do it.
Private Christian elementary school in the 70’s and yes, by all means they used corporal punishment. I don’t think I went a single school year without getting the paddle at least once. Usually my crime was talking too much to my friends in class or being sassy to the teacher.
Attending school in Korea; graduated high school in 2001. Corporal punishment was used quite liberally back then, and teachers could punish you however they wanted - they could hit you on the head with a hardcover book, beat you with a mop, make you kneel on the hard floor for half an hour, etc. The worst punishment was when they made you squat down, grab your ears, and waddle around the track in that position. By the end, your thighs were on fire. The toliets were squat toliets, and you could always tell which girls had been punished with the squats the day before by the screams of agony that came from the stalls.
The punishments were definitely painful (one teacher made us kneel on our desks and hold our chairs above our heads for half an hour) but the humiliation was the worst part of it. Also, teachers were rarely rational and calm when they dealt them out. There were plenty of times when the teachers would just take out their anger on the students. Now that I’m a teacher, I completely understand where the urge to beat your students comes from 
but that just underscores my belief that corporal punishment needs a lot of strict rules to be effective.
According to my father the boys quickly learned to fear the old ladies most. Both his grammar school and high school principals were women and neither had the slightest hesitation paddling boys (who by HS were often much larger than them).
According to my mother boys could be paddled (on clothed behinds*) by any teacher, male or female, in front of other students, including girls. Girls could only be spanked by female teachers, in private, with no boys or men present. That said she never heard of a girl getting CP (well other than the odd slap on the knuckles with a ruler). In high school it was actually prohibited for girls to be administed CP.
*I don’t know if boys ever had to drop trousers in private, but given this was in the era of compulsory nude swim classes it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.
Yes, my grade school used CP; no, never on me. Nuns used to bean kids with erasers flung across the room (I marveled at their aim, til my brother said they just aimed for the back row and figured they’d probably hit a kid guilty of SOMETHING), hit kids on the head or hand with wooden pointers, or, for the really bad kids, take them to the hall and bounce them against the walls. This was late 1960’s, Chicago area.
My sister teaches at a high school in Louisiana where boys (not girls) have the option of in-school suspension or the paddle; she says most choose the paddle, as it’s over faster. (See Bosstrain? You don’t have to be an expat!) From that and the posts on here, it seems corporal punishment is more likely to be meted out to boys than to girls. Hmm.
I didn’t think that erasers counted. They were still doing that when I graduated from high school in 1976. Typically for talking in class. You’d turn your head to say something and wham eraser from the front of the room. You’d wear that chalk mark all day!
There was no paddling of backsides as far as I know. Certainly no one ever said. The boys got the cane in HS and had to go to the subject Master (and, later on, when they tightened the rules) the Deputy Head Master.
My only - and very frequent - experience was with a ruler across the palm. In front of the class with half a dozen other recidivists receiving the same punishment.
According to Wikipedia corporal punishment was not illegal in Pennsylvania in the 1940s or any other state except New Jersey (“In 1867 New Jersey became the first U.S. state to abolish corporal punishment in schools. The second was Massachusetts 104 years later in 1971.” That doesn’t mean it might not have been against local ordinance or against the policies of a given school.
It was forbidden in my district and in most public school districts in Ohio when I started elementary school in the 1990s. (Corporal punishment was legal in Ohio public schools as recently as 2009, but the state added all kinds of hurdles in the early 90s, leading to all but around ten (out of more than 600) districts abolishing corporal punishment by the time it was banned in all public schools.)
Rural Indiana, early 70s. Corporal punishment was administered freely. They called them “swats”. Got it twice in grade school and once in high school. Don’t remember the offense except the first time in grade school was for throwing snow balls at cars on the road going past the school.
Australia in the late 70’s. They used a cricket bat on the ass and for serious offenses a cane to the fingers of your upturned had. I thought I was going to get it once (I can’t remember why) but the teacher was a cool guy and we just went to his office and shot the shit until lunch was over.
I finished high school in the US in the early 80’s and it was unheard of in my school district. It was inconceivable to students and teachers that you could get whacked across the fingertips with a cane several times with no repercussions.
Hell no. The idea of corporal punishment in school would have been outrageous. (Public schools in New Jersey: Kindergarten started in 1990, graduated high school in 2003.)
Yes - a leather strap on the open palm: one “swish” for minor infractions, ranging up to “six of the best” for very serious misbehaviour. Towards the end of the 1970s miscreants were offered a choice of the strap or after-school detention. Nearly everyone continued to take the strap. It was much quicker.
I had it only once.
NSW, 1970s.
SC here too. I had totally forgotten about having the gym teacher do the dirty work. I think the gym teachers were perv’s. The worst I got was whacks with the strap wearing those thin school issue gym shorts in 7th grade. (we were supposed to be running laps and cut gym and went to the store across the street and bought candy)
UK, state primary school, 1977: threatened with a slipper for soaping the toilets. But never actually hit.
UK state primary school about 1977 (hi jjimm!), I had a smack on the hand with a ruler for ‘reclaiming’ my confiscated toy from the teacher’s desk during break.
I remember two very bad boys getting caned in my state junior school in about 1980.
No corporal punishment at my private high school in the 1980s, but don’t recall if it had become illegal or just wasn’t school policy. (it was an all girls school, we were nice girls).
A few paddles for defenestration seems fair.
I got the cuts a few times in school. Across the hands with a cane.
I started school late fifties but this would have been around 1961 I guess.
I graduated from an Ohio public high school in 1993. Corporal punishment was still an option in our school system, but I never heard of it being used. The last time I heard of it was in the 6th grade, so … 1987?
I never needed it. I was that kid that cried if the teacher yelled.