est in the background of the present, and will never
have to hunt for a way back because it will never have lost connection.

3. Education as Reconstruction. In its contrast with the ideas both
of unfolding of latent powers from within, and of the formation from
without, whether by physical nature or by the cultural products of the
past, the ideal of growth results in the conception that education is
a constant reorganizing or reconstructing of experience. It has all the
time an immediate end, and so far as activity is educative, it reaches
that end--the direct transformation of the quality of experience.
Infancy, youth, adult life,--all stand on the same educative level
in the sense that what is really learned at any and every stage of
experience constitutes the value of that experience, and in the sense
that it is the chief business of life at every point to make living thus
contribute to an enrichment of its own perceptible meaning.

We thus reach a technical definition of education: It is that
reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning
of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of
subsequent experience. (1) The increment of meaning corresponds to
the increased perception of the connections and continuities of the
activities in which we are engaged. The activity begins in an impulsive
form; that is, it is blind. It does not know what it is about; that is
to say, what are its interactions with other activities. An activity
which brings education or instruction with it makes one aware of some
of the connections which had been imperceptible. To recur to our simple
example, a child who reaches for a bright light gets burned. Henceforth
he knows that a certain act of touching in connection with a certain
act of vision (and vice-versa) means heat and pain; or, a certain
light means a source of heat. The acts by which a scientific man in his
laboratory learns more about flame differ no whit in principle. By doing
certain things, he makes perceptible certain connections of heat with
other things, which had been previously ignored. Thus his acts in
relation to these things get more meaning; he knows better what he
is doing or "is about" when he has to do with them; he can intend
consequences instead of just letting them happen--all synonymous ways
of saying the same thing. At the same stroke, the flame has gained in
meaning; all that is known about combustion, oxidation, abou