10 1950s School Punishments that No Longer EXIST

The squeak of chalk, the snap of a wooden ruler, and the bench outside the principal's frosted-glass door. These were the punishments that ran the American classroom in the 1950s, and they have all but vanished from the rooms our grandchildren sit in now. We walk back through all ten, in the order we first came to know them: the cap and the corner, the ruler across the knuckles, five hundred lines, your name on the blackboard, a bar of soap, kept in from recess, nose in the circle, staying after the bell, the principal's paddle, and the dread of wait till you get home. We end where every punishment pointed: the long walk down the hall, and the door at the end of it.