An important educational philosopher and statesman of the late nineteenth century, William Torrey Harris served as the chief administrator of the St. Louis Public Schools from 1868 to 1880 and as the United States Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906.
Beginning his career in 1857 as an elementary school teacher in the St. Louis public school system, Harris progressed through the ranks, becoming superintendent in 1868. During this same period, his life as a philosopher flourished. He founded the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in 1867, and became an important part of a small group of scholars and educators who studied the German philosopher Georg William Friedrich Hegel, a community that would become known as the St. Louis Philosophical movement.
