Curious about the 40's and 50's.

I am also a product of a Catholic education from the 50s and 60s, and while spanking was not common, it was always an option on the table. I don't have any way to judge whether spanking or the threat thereof changed behavior in the long run, but there is no doubt that discipline in the classroom, and an associated improved learning environment, was much stronger then than now.

And that is at the root of the different mindset.

Even if there was only one or two kids sent to the principle's office or otherwise subjected to CP each school year, everyone knew it was an option.

And it went further than schools. Your parents might rarely spank, but even if they had never spanked you before you knew that they had that option if they wanted to use it and you pushed them just too far. If you spent the weekend with relatives you knew they would treat you like one of their own so you watched yourself - not giving them cause to discipline you. Your friend's parents might never spank anyone except their own kids, but if they fixed you with a look and asked if you wanted a spanking then maybe this would be the one in a million time when they might spank you - and if they "had charge" of you then your parents might or might not complain.

Knowing that the option is on the table makes a huge difference in mindset.

Goodgulf

Spankings and paddlings were common, and widely accepted back in that period, and on into the 60s.both my parents and schools. Some parents used that method frequently, some less so, some none. And fewer used it with teens.
Can't speak for others, but when I was in school in the 50s and early/mid 60s, there was no cp past elementary school(which was thru grade 7 in my community). And this was in a rural South community.
As for other adults spanking misbehaving youngsters, yes, it did happen in my day. And as pointed out, would not happen now, unless someone didn't think about the possible consequences!

I think Goodgulf has a point about how in the past when the paddle was a possible consequence for misbehavior at school, it was a deterrent to some of us(likewise with parents use of CP). However, I do not go along with attributing the behavior problems in school today to the absence of CP. Too simplistic. I do agree that the problem is lack of effective discipline- not necessarily CP.
Some parents who never spank have well-behaved kids. Others who do spank, or whack, or swat, still have children with behavior problems.
I have always said that people should agree to disagree about the parental spanking issue. Yes, it was used seemingly effectively in the past, but its absence cannot be held responsible for today's social problems.

I'm not saying that the "good old days" were that good.

Much about them were bad. Especially if you decided to be born anything other than a White Male Protestant.

When comparing schools, what few people take into account is that schools then weren't for everyone. For example, my dad tells this story about someone he knew who, in grade five, really mouthed off to a teacher and the next week that boy was working as a hand on a construction site.

You didn't need a high school diploma back in those days and if you had one it could be a business one (i.e. you learned how to be a secretary in high school, or a draftsman, or something along that lines) that no college would look at.

Many people of my father's generation just didn't complete school. At one point the army wanted people with a minimum grade level and that was the highest grade many boys took. Others knew they didn't need calculus to work on an assembly line and left as soon as they could get a job. And who needed to waste time getting an education if her husband was going to support her and her babies?

And if you were a problem student you got sent packing. The schools were there for those who wanted to learn, not to babysit troublemakers. Most of the trouble cases ended up in the army, in "boy's schools", in jail, or working dirty jobs. And if you were 'simple' or too dumb to teach (or say, dyslexic) then why should anyone waste time trying to teach you?

Today we try to graduate every student. School systems are judged on their retention rates. Everyone works hard to make sure that the troublemakers graduate.

Which makes today's schools very different from those in the 50s and 60s. Or even the 70s. I think it would have been in the early 80s when we had a retired teacher as a substitute and when the class troublemaker gave her lip she asked why he was wasting everyone's time, that if he didn't want to learn then he could get the hell out of her classroom.

I can't see any teacher doing that today. In fact I couldn't see anyone but a senior doing it then, but that was how it used to be in the bad old days.

Goodgulf

I'm not quite that old, but growing up in the 1960s/early 70s I can say spanking was always an option and its use varied from family to family in my neighborhood. In one house it was really common and they had a paddle hanging in the kitchen. Kids got spanked right through high school. In others, mine for example, it was considered the "nuclear option," appllied only rarely and only for the most serious violations of fundamental behavior. At the house down the street, it was somewhere between the two extremes. I do remember one family in the neighborhood where spankings were given by the mom pretty much where the offense occurred until the kid reached the age of 10. At 10, girls were taken to Mommy's room for a hairbrush spanking while boys were taken to dad's workshop for the strap. I remember this because my pal got in trouble one Saturday morning and had to spend a whole day waiting in the workshop for his father to come home from a golf date. I remember he was thrilled because his father felt he had "suffered enough" and let him off with a stern warning.

There were two things that touch on this mentality during the first season of Mad Men. Nothing on topic for the board, but it reference the mentality.

In one episode the hero returns from a long day of work, drinking (at work), and cheating on his wife and his wife demands that he punish their son. The hero retorts that his father used to horsewhip him and it never did anything but teach him to hate his father (who never really bounded with his son the whorechild).
At that point the father basically declares that they are non-spanking household and the mother goes along.

The second time, there's a kids party and the adults are drinking hard as the kids play in the backyard. One of the adults puts a drink down so it's only balanced on a table (not on purpose, he's just drunk) when someone elses kid goes running by and when the drink falls he cuffs the kid on the face. The kid's father notices, asks WTF, and the other adult explains what happened.

Picture that happening today. Someone drunk at a party just cuffed your kid for being a kid. As you're picturing what you'd do, the father in the 60s just asks his boy if he's learned his lesson or he needs more. The drunk has to pacify the father to keep him from beating the kid for embarrassing them at a party.

That's the mentality of those days. Adults always right, kids aren't asked their side, and if someone is swift to punish no one says much unless it crosses a line.

Goodgulf

In the 1940's and 1950's our acting principle in our elementary school had a black strap (which I saw) and the rumor was she would use it on the children. I never knew any child who got the strap and only heard rumors of children receiving the strap. Many many years later, I was told by a former male student friend that he was strapped by this principle with that strap. She made him take down his pants and then his underwear. She had him bend over a desk and she proceeded to strap him. He got about twelve on his bare bottom. He also said that she would sometimes take the smaller children off to a side room and spanked them with her hand OTK on the bare bottom.

Goodgulf brings up the point about how would someone in today's society react if someone at a party or bbq slapped somebody else's kid in the face. Australian author Christos Tsiolkas wrote a book called The Slap, which centred on that very incident. It was also made into a highly acclaimed TV show. The book and show are less about the incident than it's aftermath and the stress that puts on the families and relationships of the people involved. I haven't read the book or seen the show, but it was hard to avoid information about it, especially the show. General consensus was that the child was a horrible kid who actually deserved a smack, although it shouldn't have been on the face and it wasn't the person who did it's place to do so.

Taking things back a bit further - I was recently watching some Public Domain downloads. Movies that were so minor in their day that no one bothered to renew copyright and are now legally available for all, and I came across one from 1937. You can legally find it at http://archive.org/details/PhotosbyHaroldDickTracyAll15ChaptersCombined and in the first episode there's a puppet show where a Ghost confronts a Little Boy and demands "Why was your little sister spanked?". The answer is "Because I lied."

We don't see much of the puppet show (it seems to lecture more than spank) but an undeserved spanking was acceptable grist for something like that back.