You may be thinking of spin training, which was indeed eliminated from the U.S. PPL training regimen quite a few years ago.
Intentional spins were removed from the UK PPL sylabus after the CAA figured out that more pilots were killed in spin training than in unintentional spins. Nowadays training only goes as far as recognition and recovery from an incipient spin. With, of course, a heavy dose of "never get into this situation".
Intentional spins are an aerobatic manoever and part of aerobatics training.