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William Torrey Harris (10 September 1835 - 5 November 1909) was an American educator, philosopher, and lexicographer.
Born in North Killingly, Connecticut, he moved west and taught school in St. Louis, Missouri from 1857 to 1880. From 1868 to 1880, he was also superintendent of schools in St. Louis.
He founded and edited the first philosophical periodical in America, the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (1867), editing it until 1893. He was a key member of a philosophical society that, during the beginning of the American Civil War, met in St. Louis; it promoted the view that the entire unfolding was part of a universal plan, a working out of an eternal historical dialectic, as theorized by Hegel.
Harris was associated with Bronson Alcott's Concord School of Philosopy from 1880 to 1889, when he became U.S. Commissioner of Education, serving until 1906. He did his best to organize all phases of education on the principles of philosophical pedagogy as espoused by Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Froebel, Pestalozzi and many others of idealist philosophies.
He expanded the Bureau of Education, started graphic exhibits of the United States in international expositions, and incorporated the first kindergarten into the American public school system.
He was responsible for introducing reindeer into Alaska. This was so that the native whalers and trappers would have another livelihood, before they brought other species to extinction.
As editor-in-chief of Webster's New International Dictionary (1909), he originated the divided page.
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