Explain the John Dewey quote, "Education is life."

Dewey's statement brings to light the need for real world
applications to education.  As a Progressive educator, Dewey understood that education
fails students if it does not link what is happening in the classroom to the world
outside of it.  Better than most, Dewey understood the need to bridge theory and
practice.  When Dewey argues the link between the two in "Education is life," he
stresses the idea that learning in the classroom setting has to connect to the
experience outside of it.  In this respect, Dewey stands alone because he understood
that there is a fluid dynamic to both learning and consciousness and educational
philosophy has to embrace both realities:

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Life, for Dewey, began and ended in
humans’ experiences; that is, humans using appropriate methods could successfully cope
with life’s confusing, obscure, and indeterminate situations. The key to coping with
such difficulties, Dewey insisted, was using insights to define problems, establishing a
set of possible solutions, determining the likely consequences of each possibility, and
then evaluating the best possibility through observation and
experiment.

The
challenges that "life" poses compels Dewey to believe that life and education have to be
linked in order to bring out these complexities and unique nuances that will allow
learners to navigate these domains with some semblance of
success.