BEIJING — Trying to be helpful, a Chinese father at our sons’ elementary school advised me to slap my child’s face if he was being recalcitrant. He made a slicing hand gesture. “This is what I do,” he said.

“It won’t work,” I said, appalled and hoping an argument based on efficiency rather than morality might persuade a father who clearly believed the Chinese saying that “a dutiful son is made by the rod.”

“You’re wrong! It will,” he said, breezily, turning his attention to a more agreeable parent at the school meeting, where we were hearing about secondary education options for our children.

Corporal punishment in schools was outlawed in China in 1986, but the harsh disciplining of children remains widespread, reflecting a tradition of “dama jiaoyu,” or hitting-and-cursing education, even if it has become a topic of debate among some parents in recent years. The habit can easily slip into abuse, scholars say.