To be fair, reproductive, memory, and informational learning and its results are
not superfluous if it is then employed and connected to other actions and inquiries; if it is
in the service of understanding or creating future conceptions. Dewey (1934) says this is
when imagination comes into play, “the conscious adjustment of the new and the old is
imagination”…“Imagination is the only gateway through which these [prior] meanings
can find their way into present interactions” (p. 272). Memory is needed to recall
previous experiences, learning, and information. Memory and imagination have a
symbiotic relationship. To imagine requires one to call up, in the mind’s eye, past
experience, knowledge, and imagery; memory gives a student the materials necessary for
his “imagination to combine, alter, and create something new” (Vygotsky, 2004, p.9).
Without memory there would be no possibility to imagine. To project the possible, the
future, is to imagine combinations of old and new knowledge.