As a teacher, I believe that corporal punishment is never acceptable. I actually feel that it is rarely necessary for parents to hit children. The danger with corporal punishment is that people will hit the child in anger, or when control is lost. This teaches the children that it is acceptable to hit in anger or frustration, not to avoid the behavior.
However, I can’t honestly say that there haven’t been moments when I wished that it was alright to smack a kid up the side of the head – not hard, mind you – just to see if you could knock their brain back into a place where it could function.
fortunately, my brain kicked in before I did something foolish.