author
William Torrey Harris
1835–1909
A leading voice in American education in the late 19th century, he helped shape public schooling at both the city and national level. He is especially remembered for supporting one of the first permanent public kindergartens in the United States and for bringing philosophy into debates about how children learn.
1 Audiobook
Report of the Committee of Fifteen Read at the Cleveland Meeting of the Department of Superintendence, February 19-21, 1884, with the Debate
by William Torrey Harris, A. S. (Andrew Sloan) Draper, H. S. (Horace Sumner) Tarbell
About the author
Born in Connecticut in 1835, William Torrey Harris became an influential American educator, philosopher, and editor. After attending Yale, he moved to St. Louis, where he spent many years teaching and then serving as superintendent of schools, building a reputation as one of the best-known school leaders of his time.
Harris believed education should do more than teach basic skills: it should prepare people to take part in family life, work, and civic society. In St. Louis, he worked with Susan Blow in 1873 to establish the first permanent public kindergarten in the United States, and he also helped promote serious study of philosophy, especially Hegel, through his writing and editorial work.
From 1889 to 1906, he served as U.S. Commissioner of Education, giving him a national platform for his ideas about schools, curriculum, and culture. Though some of his educational views have since been debated, his influence on the growth of American public education was substantial, and he remained a prominent public intellectual until his death in 1909.