The Motivation of School Work

Abstract

While extended use of the word is reasonably recent, dating with Dr. Dewey and others some twelve years ago, yet the spirit of motivation was fully anticipated by Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and, in fact, almost every educational writer of note in modern times. The motivation of school work for children means that the child, his needs, and his interests are to be taken into consideration so fully in the organization of school work that school tasks will no longer appear as tasks imposed by an outside agency, but as problems which the child himself is eager and anxious to solve. That such a reorganization of school work is possible has been fully demonstrated. Dewey's demonstration in the elementary school was crude in many respects, because it was the first groping in the dark to find a better way. However, all must recognize that Dewey was absolutely right in recognizing the child as the logical center for the organization of school work. Many teachers have since demonstrated that from the standpoint of complete and logical information there is no loss, but an actual gain, through the use of the principle of motivation. For instance, a sixth-grade teacher in one of the large school systems of Illinois organized her language work entirely from the standpoint of children's interests and was careful to undertake nothing which was not thoroughly motivated from the child's standpoint. As the year's work was nearing completion, she checked up by the course of study to see how fully the requirements of the language