Answering the charge that the new Harkness Plan at Exeter was tending to "soften boys" through its emphasis on the individual, Headmaster Lewis Perry yesterday replied that "contrary to the generally expressed opinion that the classes resemble tutoring schools where the instructor does all the work, the present method of teaching at Exeter is much more difficult for the boys and certainly harder for the teachers." In reading his statement, interested observers of the New Hampshire school will feel reassured that the worst possible criticism of the step has been refuted.

There has been much justified doubt as to the advisability of individual attention for boys of Preparatory school age. Men weaned on the "five-hundred-times-neatly-in-ink" policy have felt that such treatment would undermine rather than develop the resourcefulness and independence upon which hangs youth's virility and chances for success at college. And had the Exeter faculty failed to recognize such a possibility and to counteract it by an iron hand beneath the velveteen, the shell-backed pessimism would have been amply substantiated.

It is still a bit too early to judge by concrete results, but if the Headmaster's report is to be credited, Exeter has apparently found the happy medium between the hickory and sugar-lump theories of secondary education. The Harkness Plan is by no means a new one, but it gains real significance through the high standing of the school which has adopted it and the intelligence with which, to all appearances, it is being executed.