Goes even further back. This is pure "don't spare the rod" discipline right out of the bible.
The truly disgusting part is this was a perversion of a planting metaphor.
When you plant, you want the plant to grow upright, so you use a rod. A post through which one is able to both guide & measure.
The sadists perverted it to mean using the rod to beat the crap out of another human being to achieve "pain compliance"
...but does nothing to raise the morality, wisdom, intelligence or character of the individual. Furthermore, they even twisted the word discipline, taking it from it's original meaning "to teach" and perverting it to mean "to punish".
When you control the words, and the meanings thereof, you have power to control the minds of men.