The mechanisms of discipline and power within the institution of the school constitute, in part, the relationship between society and childhood. This article traces the relationship between official regulative discourses of control and punishment practices over students in primary school. It focuses on the memories of schooling of first-year students in a Department of Primary Education at a Greek University. The concepts of power, discipline and discourse from the theory of Michel Foucault are drawn on to examine the pedagogical control over primary school pupils. The research was carried out using an open questionnaire in which participants were asked to describe their experiences of school punishment. The key findings showed that corporal punishment is dominant in the memory of the majority of research participants. The reason for the pupils' punishment was mainly their making noise in the classroom and their poor performance in core subjects of the curriculum. These findings are significant for the sociology of education as they reveal the real and symbolic violence of school life that endures in memories of childhood, schooling and society.