A unique highlight of the Salopian cultural calendar is the McEachran Prize. This unashamedly scholarly yet playful competition is named after iconic Shrewsbury teacher Frank McEachran – or ‘Kek’ as he was known to all.

Kek taught at Shrewsbury from 1935 to 1976. Deeply eccentric – in all the right ways – Kek invented the idea of teaching from what he called ‘Spells’. Pupils were invited to choose short extracts of poetry or prose and commit them to memory. Standing on a chair, the youngster would recite the Spell, and then spirited and scholarly discussion would follow.

This year’s 20 Spells covered authors as diverse as WB Yeats, Jane Austen, Bob Dylan, Karl Marx, Ocean Vuong, Charlotte Bronte, Echiro Oda, Seneca, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde – and the screenplay of the Barbie movie. Contestants from all five year groups read their Spell – then spoke for four minutes on whatever thoughts and ideas the Spell provoked for them.

The rapt audience was bewitched by the heady mix of intellective mischief and learned commentary. In a sound-bite world, where attention spans have shrunk to a matter of seconds, the exercise of close listening for 20 chunks of four minutes is a solid effort. The reward for the audience was a host of mini-epiphanies and intellectual satori.

Those students of Kek who committed Spells to memory decades ago can very often remember and recite them to this day. What truer testimony could there be to the efficacy of this one-off methodology? The inspiration, allegedly, for Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, Kek taught notable Old Salopians such as Sir Michael Palin, Richard Ingrams and Paul Foot (the creators of Private Eye).

Not one to follow a syllabus, Kek was a maverick whose like is probably no longer at large on the contemporary educational landscape. The teaching profession is certainly more… well, professional now. But, anything that triggers the sparkle of unfettered academic play is surely a great thing?

As the 2024 edition of the McEachran Prize unfolded at Shrewsbury School, it was easy to imagine the spirit of Kek smiling down – twinkly-eyed and approving – on this evening of free-range ‘serious fun’ of a distinctively Salopian kind.

Essays https://leowinkley.com/essays/