In education, and presumably also in work, there's a very useful distinction to be made between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is "wow, that's cool and interesting, I wanna read more about this later, I wonder what happens if we change this and try it again?" Extrinsic motivation is "ah shit, I have to hand this in by tomorrow or I'll get a detention/the teacher will be annoyed/I'll fail the thing and have to waste time doing it again". Both carrot and stick often only bring about extrinsic motivation; "if I do this we'll, I'll get a prize/a certificate/a pat on the back from the teacher" – it's only effective for a long as there's someone handing out prizes and certificates. As soon as that stops, what's the point any more? You seem to be advocating for the latter, which makes it hard to agree with you on this occasion.