Harris, William Torrey

The American philosopher and educator William Torrey Harris (1835–1909) was born near North Killingsly, Connecticut, and educated at Andover Academy and Yale University. Harris began teaching in St. Louis in 1857 and served as superintendent of schools in that city from 1868 to 1880. While superintendent, Harris established the first permanent public kindergarten in the country and advocated the teaching of a non-English language to the children of immigrants. His annual reports to the board of education were as famous and widely read as those of Horace Mann.

A lifelong scholar of German philosophy, especially the work of Hegel, Harris was a founder of the St. Louis movement in philosophy and edited The Journal of Speculative Philosophy until 1893. He also translated Hegel's Logic into English. Hegel's Idealism formed the basis of all Harris's social and educational thought. This attachment to German philosophy has been criticized, as noted by Merle Curti and T. J. Fiala, as leading Harris to authoritarian and statist views of education and society.

Harris served as U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906. The author of nearly 500 journal articles, he also published An Introduction to the Study of Philosophy (1889) and The Psychologic Foundations of Education (1898).

Harris was the most influential figure in American public education in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and is ranked with Horace Mann and John Dewey as a founder of American educational philosophy. Harris is generally credited with the institutionalization [Page 447]of the common school in urban America and was a vigorous advocate for a humanistic curriculum for all students. He believed that every child had the right to an elementary education in grammar, literature and art, mathematics, geography, and history, knowledge of which equipped the child to participate fully in the culture of the larger society and laid the foundation for full participation in political and economic life. However, Harris viewed the common school as only one of the agencies of education for the child. The home, the church, the neighborhood, and the workplace also played significant roles. Harris became an advocate of free public high schools in which students also studied an academic curriculum.

Harris's educational views lost currency as the new century unfolded. His advocacy of the common school, a common humanistic curriculum for all students, and textbook-centered teaching gradually gave way to the proponents of manual training, child study, and experiential learning. The characterization of Harris as the “great conservator” may not be totally accurate, but it has survived the test of time.