64. A. Pimloche, _Pestalozzi and the Foundation of the Modern
Elementary School_, p. 139.
65. Friedrich Froebel, _Education of Man_, "To secure for this
ability skill and directness, to lift it into full
consciousness, to give it insight and clearness, and to exalt
it into a life of creative freedom, is the business of the
subsequent life of man in successive stages of development and
cultivation."
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CHAPTER IX
INCENTIVES
DEFINITION OF INCENTIVE.--An "incentive" is defined by the
Century Dictionary as "that which moves the mind or stirs the
passions; that which incites or tends to incite to action; motive,
spur." Synonyms--"impulse, stimulus, incitement, encouragement,
goad."
IMPORTANCE OF THE INCENTIVE.--The part that the incentive plays
in the doing of all work is enormous. This is true in learning, and
also in the performance of work which is the result of this
learning: manual work and mental work as well. The business man
finishing his work early that he may go to the baseball game; the
boy at school rushing through his arithmetic that he may not be kept
after school; the piece-worker, the amount of whose day's pay
depends upon the quantity and quality he can produce; the student of
a foreign language preparing for a trip abroad,--these all
illustrate the importance of the incentive as an element in the
amount which is to be accomplished.
TWO KINDS OF INCENTIVES.--The incentive may be of two kinds: it
may be first of all, a return, definite or indefinite, which is to
be received when a certain portion of the work is done, or it may be
an incentive due to the working conditions themselves. The latter
case is exemplified where two people are engaged in the same sort of
work and start in to race one another to see who can accomplish the
most, who can finish the fixed amount in the shortest space of time,
or who can produce the best quality. The incentive may be in the
form of some definite aim or goal which is understood by the worker
himself, or it may be in some natural instinct which is roused by
the work, either consciously to the worker, or consciously to the
man who is assigning the work, or consciously to both, or
consciously to neither one. In any of these cases it is a natural
instinct that is being appealed to and that in
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