FROM CORN TO KARO HOWARD R. WILLIAMS,WESTERNRESERVE ACADEMY, HUDSON, OHIO
During the past few years, it has become our custom a t Western Reserve Academy to have each student in the chemistry course choose some well-known and much-used product of chemical manufacture, make a study of the processes used in its making, and then produce the product, on a small scale in the laboratory. We do this as a means of showing the student the tremendous importance of chemistry to him personally, and at the same time to open new. windows,of vision through which he might catch a glimpse of chemistry as the underlying science of industry. This research-so-called by us-has completely supplanted the old semester paper which was supposed to, but never, did, quite attain this same goal. The project method begins where the semesterpaper should have begun, i. e., with the student's interest. The students choose their own products to be made in so far as possible. A few, of -course, will have no ideas, hazy ideas, or quite impractical ideas. Th& must be guided and helped into workable ideas. To the great 'relief dnd joy of the teacher and the deep satisfaction of the students, a very great-many of the class will select their own tasks. This starts the job off'with an 'eager interest that no assignment of topics for semester .pape&"could eiier hope to approach. The next step is for the student to gather all the available information possible on the manufactur
