Educational Philosophy and Theory,Vol. 44, No.

2, 2012
doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2010.00646.x

From Waiting for the Bus to Storming

the Bastille: From Sartrean seriality
to the relationships that form
classroom communities epat_646 183..195

Sean Blenkinsop
Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada

Abstract
One of the tasks of Jean-Paul Sartre’s later work was to consider how an individual could live
freely within a free community. This paper examines how Sartre describes the process of group
formation and the implications of this discussion for education. The paper begins with his
metaphor of a bus queue in order to describe a series.Then, by means of Sartre’s analysis of the
storming of the Bastille, the discussion expands to show how a series becomes a genuine group.
Finally, suggestions are offered, extrapolated from Sartre’s theorizing about groups, as to how
teachers might create and maintain genuine groups in and across schools rather than having
them remain merely collections of individuals organized from outside.Throughout the paper, the
implications of Sartre’s insights into groups and educational settings are examined.

Keywords: education, Sartre, existentialism, group-in-fusion, community

Introduction
One of the tasks of Jean-Paul Sartre’s later work was to consider how an individual could
live freely within a free community. In the Critique of Dialectical Reason he attempted to
theorize the genesis of a group within competing and possibly contradictory parameters.
On the one hand, Sartre wanted to recognize that a genuine group can emerge as the
result of the creative, committed will of its members, on the other, this group must be
able to cohere without requiring the sacrifice of self by the individuals who constitute it.
Sartre wanted the possibility of a deeply committed and well-functioning group without
the loss of that individual autonomy that defines an authentic existentialism. In many
ways this description of flourishing individuals working together for the benefit of each
and all aligns with the kind of ‘authentic’ classroom community advocated for by many
educational theorists.1 While recognizing that community building in the classroom is
not a new issue, our purpose here is to add to the discussion a bit through an exploration
and interpretation of some under-theorized and unjustly neglected later2 Sartre.Thereby
enabling us to see what he considers important with regard to the formation of groups,

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Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and
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184 Sean Blenkinsop

especially those in institutionally constructed situations, the implications this exploration

has for schools as a potentially significant critical diagnostic tool, and the worries brought
forth with regard to the very possibility of relationships themselves within this institution
called education.
Sartre argued that many of those groups that identify themselves as communities are,
in fact, not of the kind mentioned above; rather, they are no more than a loose collection
of people gathered together by virtue of the constituting force of an outside entity. Sartre
calls this collection of people a ‘series’.3 In the case of workers in a factory, the outside
force would be the owner, in the case of students, it might be a teacher and, in the case
of teachers, it could be a school board, school administrator, centralized funding source,
etc. Sartre would say that unless the members of any grouping are individually and
collectively aware of self and each other, then the collection may only be defined as a
series. A series requires that its members be passive, uninvolved, and unwilling to
overcome the difficulty posed by this tension between isolation and reciprocity. ‘The
isolation of the organism ... is revealed through the isolation everyone lives as the
provisional negation of their reciprocal relations with Others. This man is isolated not
only by his body as such, but also by the fact that he turns his back on his neighbour—
who, moreover, has not even noticed him ...’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 256). Sartre contends,
which should concern those in education who see community as necessary for learning,
that it may be impossible for a genuine relationship to exist between those who find
themselves pushed together due to this outside force. However, out of such a series might
emerge a genuine group in response to particular circumstances; and, dangerously, a
group might revert to a series when the circumstances which precipitated the formation
of the group are removed.
In this paper I intend to examine how a Sartrean series can transform itself into a
genuine group. Using his metaphor of a bus queue, I will first describe a series. Second,
by means of Sartre’s analysis of the storming of the Bastille, I will show how a series
may become a genuine group. Finally, I offer suggestions, extrapolated from Sartre’s
theorizing about groups, as to how teachers might create and maintain genuine groups
in schools rather than merely collections of individuals organized from outside.
Throughout, I will ask what Sartre’s insights can teach us about groups in educational
settings, how classroom groups, and even teacher groups, can fail to be productive and
creative, and how they might succeed. Before continuing it is important to note that
although not explicitly discussed in this project one hoped for result is to open a
window into existentialism and to more explicitly examine, educationally, a key con-
tribution to the history of social philosophy while responding to Gordon’s 1985
comment with regards to the Critique that, ‘what arouses wonder is that philosophers of
education have shied away from this study in the quarter century since it was written’
(Gordon, 1985, p. 43).4

The Series: At the Bus Stop Our Journey Begins

Sartre sees a tension in human life between the isolation of the individual and interper-
sonal reciprocity, and this tension increases when people are forced together.5 The image
Sartre (1978, pp. 256-265) uses to help us understand the series is a queue at a bus stop.

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 From Waiting for the Bus to Storming the Bastille 185

The members of this gathering of people have little interest in each other, turn their
backs, absorb themselves in their newspapers, or think about other gatherings to which
they genuinely belong (e.g. family, sports team, etc.).6 They are negating reciprocity with
each other through their actions and this results in a ‘plurality of isolation’. ‘These people
do not care about or speak to each other and, in general, they do not look at one another;
they exist side by side alongside a bus stop’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 256). Sartre claims that
members of this series are semi-aware of one another, because they have real member-
ship in other groups, and because full awareness would require acknowledging the role
of the external constitutor (i.e. the bus company). The bus-riders are together only
because of the shared knowledge of the bus schedule, the destination, and the coinci-
dence of location. Eventually, daily repetition of the same routine, same time and same
bus, turns them, in this respect, into passive recipients of life and experience, which is the
defining characteristic of the series.
For educators the potential for a ‘plurality of isolations’ in our present educational
system as a result of routine scheduling and classroom inertia is a real danger. Schedules
and programs should be flexible enough to enable individual students, and teachers, to
work with others in different and varying ways. Anyone working with others whom they
have previously ignored, or discovering strengths in others of which they were previously
unaware can potentially shed the dangerous tendency to create static or prejudge their
peers and thus avert negative reciprocity in the class. At one level, this places an onus on
the teacher to develop a deep sense of each student in their particularity in order to best
create a curriculum that allows each to be seen publicly and honoured as being of value
in, through, and for that same particularity. This process might involve the expansion of
what has traditionally been see as ‘of value’ in school. At another level, there is a delicate
line to walk here since the more the teacher determines the organization itself and the
direction of creative investigation, the less self-creation is exercised by the student, and
the less possibility there is for genuine group formation. One way that this might be
accomplished is through larger scale place and community based projects.7 Drawn from
the reality of the students’ and their communities’ lives these projects have to be large
enough and diverse enough so that everyone is necessary for completion and so that each
individual might be known for the particular skill, energy, ability, creativity, or knowledge
base they uniquely bring to bear towards the group’s overall success. By building this
kind of project into the larger school year the teacher is potentially assisting in the
overcoming of that tension between isolation and reciprocity Sartre so clearly points to.
In the next step of his argument, Sartre alters the image and presents the point of view
of the bus/bus company.8 To the bus company these individuals who wait are completely
interchangeable; they are not a ‘rich differentiated synthesis’9 and, even though they all
have the same acts to perform, such as getting on the bus, paying, and finding a seat, from
the point of the bus company which has to fulfil its mandate by following its prescribed
route and schedule, these commuters ‘are identical as separate individuals’ (Sartre, 1978,
p. 260). This condition of ‘being completely interchangeable’ Sartre regards as a ‘scan-
dalous absurdity’. The needs of the bus have outweighed those of the queue occupants.
In some situations in the educational field, the bus might correspond to any system
that is created independently of the people who are directly involved in the project of
teaching and learning. One challenge for educational administrations is to determine

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how much ‘absurdity’ exists; that is to say how much interchangeability of the kind
that abrogates genuine personhood there is amongst any of the constituent groups. As
we plan schedules, organize classrooms, determine teaching loads, or place students
and teachers themselves one question that ought to be repeatedly posed is what the
effect of these will be upon the potential for relationship between the participants in
learning.
A recent example of the application of external principles to educational practice is
that offered by a decision in Ontario related to, ironically, busing. Here school trustees
in a small rural district caught under the burden of an impending financial crisis decided
that the elementary children would start school at 7:30 each morning while the more
rested high-school students would begin at 9am. School would then end at 3:30pm and
5pm respectively in order to rid the board of having school on Friday altogether. These
decisions were centralized, made, apparently, for financial reasons, and done without
pedagogical input. The new arrangement means that fewer buses can be used in a more
‘efficient’ way and thereby reduce the overall cost of education.Whether or not these long
days, shortened weeks, and early hours are pedagogically sound is not an argument
addressed by these trustees who are often not directly involved in the project of educa-
tion. Beyond the irony, decisions of this kind, made everyday throughout educational
contexts, can contribute to the isolation of individuals. For Sartre, this centrally created
‘relation of exteriority’ (children in forced relation through age, bus-ridership, means to
offset financial pressures) disavows the potential of that ‘rich differentiated synthesis’
sought by classroom community advocates.
A queue at a bus stop is a series and, although it gives the appearance of being a group
if observed from afar, the people that compose it are living ‘separately as identical
instances of the same act’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 262); their uniqueness is related solely to their
position. I am linked to the others in the line through the coincidental need for a bus and
not through reciprocal, negotiated interest—what Sartre calls reciprocity. It is the bus, its
route and its schedule that provides the ‘synthesis’, i.e. the meaning that gives cohesion
to the queue. Coherence is not determined by the participants in the group, and the
individual rider is an inert object, there for the purpose of the bus company.
The implication of Sartre’s analysis for us as educators is clear. As educational
administration and curriculum become more centralized, more responsive to distantly
controlled economic, social, or political agendas, the structure that students, teachers,
and principals encounter is ever more predominant, and the individual commensurately
diminished. As a result, the individuals involved—administrators, teachers, and
students—become less significant and more interchangeable, and are only important
insofar as they occupy a position within the series. Teachers examine length of service
sheets to see if they are in danger of being laid off, principals are shifted between schools
every few years regardless of their and the community’s interest, and standardized testing
lines up all students in a way hauntingly reminiscent of the bus queue. For educators to
build community in the classroom they must be aware of this potential to ‘serialize’, the
better to resist it. It must be understood that this is not meant as a characterization of all
education as we currently enact it so much as a warning and reflection of what can and
does occur. The complaints and realities suggested above are far from unknown though
certainly not universal.

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 From Waiting for the Bus to Storming the Bastille 187

From Series to Group

The series, as I have described it, is the habitual relationships we have with our fellow
humans, but it is also a place out of which the true group may emerge. If the series
diminishes the creative, self-enacting individual, how is it that the series, nonetheless, can
give rise to a genuine group? In spite of the restrictions of the milieu and the tendency
to serialize life, Sartre never loses sight of the role of the individual and his/her ability to
make choices and, thus, there arises the possibility of the creation of a genuine group.
Sartre claims that humanity has an indomitable ability to adapt to situations, even
oppressive situations. With respect to human freedom, Sartre claims that it is not simply
a matter of choosing in vacuo, but of making choices within the limitations imposed by
daily living. ‘Freedom, ... does not mean the possibility of choice, but the necessity of
living these constraints in the form of exigencies which must be fulfilled by a praxis’
(Sartre, 1978, p. 326). A person may ‘choose’10 to accept and conform to an oppressive
situation in order to avoid having to deal with an even more intolerable situation or
because there is no other conceivable possibility. However, at some point in time,
individuals may find their situation intolerable.11 ‘It is impossible that this should con-
tinue; it is impossible that it should be unchangeable; it is impossible that there should be
no way out, that I should continue to live like this’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 329). This is the
moment they discover that their situation is not immutable and that there exist other
possibilities (i.e. that they are free to act).
The human condition is one in which people are ineluctably trapped and subjected
to hostile forces that are both natural and human. It is the lot of the individual to
assert her/his freedom by struggling against those forces. But, it is this discovery of
what is being struggled against that allows me to assert my freedom. I only discover
the walls of my prison by running into them, and I only recognize my situation as
intolerable by seeing the grass through the tiny prison window and thus learning that
the ‘practico-inert’ is not the only way of life. For Sartre, the practico-inert is, like
Newton’s second law of thermodynamics, the ‘stable’ position of disorganization, of
passivity. It is to this possibility of disorganized stasis and the potential to slide ‘back’
into chaos which, for Newton, organization and complexity must push against. And, it
is the practico-inert, for Sartre, against which freedom, overcoming, and life must
respond if we are to reach authenticity. It is as if the practico-inert simultaneously is
the background and lurks in the background such that it, like sirens singing to Greek
heroes, draws individuals, groups, and institutions away from their freedom and their
engaged, disruptive, life-affirming praxis and into passive acceptance of intolerable
situations.
Yet, ‘it is through the experience of alienation as necessity (... as the real, social being
of one’s being), that the practico-inert field is revealed’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 337). It is also
out of this new awareness of the practico-inert field that the genuine group, as distinct
from the series, arises in response to a constraint that is no longer tolerable, and which
causes individuals to adopt a new approach towards each other and the series.This is the
‘group-in-fusion’ which Sartre defines this way: ‘This new approach is both reflexive and
a constituent: each praxis as a free individual totalizing dialectic places itself at the service
of a common dialectic whose very type is modelled on the synthetic action of an isolated

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worker’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 340). In the group-in-fusion, each self-actualizing being wit-
nesses his/her personal goal align itself with that of the other members of the group to
form a common goal. Thus, the intrinsically important goals of each individual, or what
Sartre calls ‘the constituent dialectics’, become component parts of the constituted
dialectic, the synthesis, which is the goal of the group itself. Sartre sees humanity’s group
objective, the ultimate synthesis, as the totalizing of the ‘human world (... the world of
men and their objects) in the historical undertaking’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 341). Sartre, who
initially wanted individuals to organize according to their own ultimate possibility,
parallels that process by advocating that the ultimate goal of humanity is to get everybody
‘aligned’12 in common in order to take control of the dialectical historical process as it
moves forward into the future. As the individual chooses his/her goals and overcomes the
dialectical tensions that resist his/her movement, so too does the group.
The process of group formation begins with what Sartre calls the ‘original tension of
need’, or elsewhere, ‘scarcity’. Separate individuals simultaneously begin to see their
situations as intolerable and begin to act to transcend the present situation and, in so
doing, encounter one another. They join together through their shared goal and ‘the
group constitutes itself on the basis of a common need or common danger and defines
itself to be the common objective which determines its common praxis’ (Sartre, 1978,
p. 350). So, individuals finding their particular needs in a particular situation to be
common, come together as a group.13
One question that might arise from the above discussion is whether or not education
is forcing14 both students and teachers into a difficult process of adaptation thereby
pushing them farther and farther away from the potential for relationship at all. If
students understand school to be their only possibility or the most tolerable, preferable
to incarceration for example, then, according to Sartre, adaptation is the only recourse
they have. This has quite serious implications for individual freedom since the adapting
individual is doing so because they see no other possibility available to them. Taken to
theoretical extreme, Sartre could be understood to have serious questions and concerns
about whether genuine community development is even possible beyond any level of
simple rhetoric if adaptation is the modus operandi of that particular setting, classroom,
school, etc. A situation that requires individuals to be assorted and gathered in a
particular place with almost complete disregard for those specific individuals and their
goals is in danger of making relationship, amongst and between those selfsame indivi-
duals, itself impossible. Here the image of children waiting at both a literal and figura-
tive bus stop really gains some traction. Couple this problem with a system that often
externally mandates subject matters and classroom designs, and continually fails to
reflect the rhythms, realities, and interests of real children and the problem only becomes
more apparent.

The Bastille: The Group-in-fusion

The unparalleled importance in French history of the storming of the Bastille presents
Sartre with a powerful example of the formation of a group. It marks the transformation
of the Paris mob into a victorious force that succeeded in capturing the most hated
symbol of the Ancien Régime.15

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 From Waiting for the Bus to Storming the Bastille 189

The process of group formation goes through several stages as the people of Paris
gradually take control of their own destiny. At first, driven to utter frustration by the
oppression of the government, the people take to the streets as a mob of angry indi-
viduals. The army causes the next stage of group formation by entering Paris and
threatening to trap the mob in front of the Bastille. The people begin to realize that their
very survival is tied to that of others, that they face a common goal, and survival requires
common action. With this recognition, people realize that their individual goals and the
goals of the group become identical, and the individual praxis of flight is transformed
into the common praxis of the fight for freedom. Speaking of the individual, Sartre
says: ‘At this moment, he is sovereign, that is to say, he becomes through this change
of praxis, the organizer of common praxis’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 370). The members of the
new group now begin creating their own definition and their own destiny.
The unity of the Group arises not from one individual but from all together, and this
comes about through the embeddedness of the individual in the group. Each individual
constitutes every other as a member of the group while simultaneously constituting the
group itself.Thus, when the citizens of Paris gather, each new arrival confirms the group,
and each member of the group sees a new arrival as confirming an important and unique
addition. Individuals through free praxis join together to form a group whose common
purpose and function will permeate each and every one.
The individual then is no longer a member in a series, regarded with suspicion or
ignored, but an intrinsically important free agent engaged in a ‘constellation of mediated
reciprocities’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 379). This ‘group-in-fusion’ is not inert, but is constantly
in flux as the objective and the situations are developing. The group is in the process of
becoming and, once it achieves its objective, has transcended itself. However, a note of
caution: this is not a suggestion that all group formation is by definition good or that all
formations that appear to satisfy the above criteria are ethically supportable.16 It is also
important to remember that in spite of his move towards the group-in-fusion Sartre is
not about to give up the individual by submerging him/her in a collective, the goal is to
find a unity that protects difference and freedom and, in fact, actually provides the
possibility for maximal flourishing of each and all. ‘Sartre continues the Existential
protest against the tendency of philosophy and science to dissolve the individual human
being into impassive generalization’ (Broudy, 1971, p. 177).17
Further, as Broudy (1971) pointed out, humans are constantly in danger of acting in
bad faith,18 of creating both unforeseen and foreseen counterfinalities,19 and even of
choosing to do evil. And, as Noddings has suggested ‘community is not an unalloyed
good; it has a dark side, and both educators and students should be aware of it’
(Noddings, 1996, p. 245). Now, without going into a full-length exposition of existen-
tialist ethics, a project which Sartre himself avoided, there are several guidelines that
might help educators when considering the groups being formed in their classrooms.The
first, built out of both the draw of the practico-inert and our inveterate ability to lie to
ourselves, is the assumption of a vigilantly critical stance with regard to ourselves and our
practices to assist us in avoiding seeing and hearing what it is we want. The second,
responds to Sartre’s position that any action posits value and as such must be considered
in light of both how that action influences the freedom, ability to act of any other and
whether any particular action is one the individual would sanction for all if they were in

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the same position.The third guideline for considering a particular formation is the ability
of the group to take responsibility20 for their actions.
Now, in the average school or classroom we may not be facing an obviously intol-
erably oppressive and potentially revolutionary situation such as that confronting the
good citizens of Paris, but Sartre’s analysis provides educators with one theoretical
basis for thinking about formulating and forming groups. It is important that initially
the group have an obstacle21 to confront, thus providing a large enough common goal
that requires collective action. This is a point at which we see a potential incompat-
ibility between Sartre’s position and public educative practice as currently conceived.
It is entirely possible within a system, both competitive and individualistic, that a
stronger student might see her/his goals as being opposed to those of a weaker student,
thereby making the formation of a genuine group difficult. For Sartre’s vision to be
fulfilled each member would have to be recognized as important though not neces-
sarily identical thereby offsetting the potential concerns of the ‘stronger’ student. But
also each member must be acknowledged as essential; all must belong, and must have
freely subscribed to the project through an understanding of a common goal and how
their individual goals benefit from and align with that common goal. It is important to
note that this will vary, as it should, in both its substantive qualities and its range
depending upon the vast assortment of complexities that exist between and within any
particular classrooms.
Looking at the current situation in too many of our schools and classrooms, we might
respond that Sartre’s ideas are impractical to implement. Class sizes are too large and the
social environment is potentially at odds with the formation of groups; but rather than
dismissing Sartre’s insight, various actions might be considered. Group size might be
changed while remembering that Sartre’s example involved most of the citizens of Paris,
also, that the level of decision-making might be altered in order to allow the needs of
individuals to align with those of the group, and consideration might be given to who the
individual teachers and students are and how they might best come together. Of course,
it is not merely a question of group size; group function, conception of self, conception
of culture and community, and the social environment from which the group comes, all
must be taken into account in the process of group formation. Clearly the project of
conscious formation of groups is something that could be more deliberately attended to
throughout the schooling years.
If the goal of both education and democracy is to have active individuals exercising
their freedom within the framework of a society that involves and accepts them as equally
valuable and necessary members then it becomes apparent that both education and
democracy need to begin to function in ways similar to those Sartre describes. Schools
are in an ideal, even necessary, position to thoughtfully enact the democratic process.
While we speak about democracy in schools we are less adept at enacting it and, as a
result, students are limited in their access to the practice and understanding of democ-
racy. Sartre offers valuable ideas as to how we may move from a model that is serial in
nature and creates only a quasi-synthesis (i.e. the organization of students and teachers
into schools, classrooms, learning outcomes, and standardized tests) to the formation of
a group-in-fusion, which will reflect and promote an inclusive philosophy which must be
the basis of a democratic and pluralistic society.

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 From Waiting for the Bus to Storming the Bastille 191

Conclusion

Sartre’s analysis of the group offers useful insights to educators. By differentiating

between the pseudo-group of the series and the group-in-fusion with its potential for
creative action, it provides a theoretical basis from which to evaluate the current situa-
tions within classrooms, schools, and larger educational systems. It also describes a
potential process by which teachers and administrators might change current practices.
First, goals for the group must be practical, shared and when possible determined by the
group itself. They must also rise in response to some potentially external force, that
which is to be overcome, while also being related to or in alignment with the individual
goals of the members. Second, the group must be created with the recognition of the
freedom of its members because ‘the essential characteristic of the fused group is the
sudden resurrection of freedom’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 401). This means that each member of
the group is engaged in positing both his/her own and the common objective through the
assertion of his/her own freedom, and is also confirming the group through his/her
actions whilst allowing all the other members the freedom to validate themselves and the
group. This suggests activities like the larger group projects mentioned above and that
teachers must be quite thoughtful in order to avoid the kinds of coercion that might
invalidate potential expressions of freedom. Thirdly, the group must ‘really create’. By
this term Sartre means that all the shared but individual goals of the group, ‘the synthetic
determinations’, must result in action. ‘All synthetic determinations we described really
create the common action in so far as each of them makes it exist both in itself and
everywhere’ (Sartre, 1978, p. 401). Real action occurs in response to genuine situations
with the potential for tangible results. In educational terms this means that the group will
only form around real problems, and activities that do not connect to the students’ lives
or remain in the realm of theory will have limited tangible outcome related to group
formation. Students should be engaged in overcoming problems that they themselves
have recognized, that challenge them to exercise their individual and group freedom, and
that offer the possibility of creating real solutions and overcoming that which has been
deemed intolerable.
There is also the other, as yet unasked, question of sustaining and continuing a group
once formed. For once a group, having come together around a shared project, has
achieved its aim, what is it that might continue to hold the group together and keep it
from drifting apart, sliding back into a series, or both? Sartre proposes three necessary
components for group maintenance that might prove useful for educators to consider:
violence, the pledge, and praxis. For Sartre, ‘violence’ is not, of necessity, physical, but is
action aimed at overcoming inertia and adaptation. Thought of in this way we see
parallels to current discussions in education. Maxine Greene’s ‘Teacher as Stranger’ or
David Denton’s ‘Teacher as Dissonator’22 or Hannah Arendt’s discussions of public
space or the substantial discussions around ‘critical thinking’ all point in this direction.
The point being that part of the role of educators is to encourage students to re-open,
re-examine, and re-consider adopted ideas, beliefs, suppositions, and knowledges. They
are, in point of fact, being asked to ‘do violence’ to the current in the hopes of a new,
more expansive, deeper, subtler future. Of course, that educators themselves must
engage in similar activities in order to avoid their own complacency goes without saying.

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Beyond this, educators need to find ways to come together, to find ways to overcome
enforced serializations, to confront the formidable external difficulties, such as lack of
funds and bureaucratic constraints, as well as those internal problems inherent in the
development of a group such as the continual tendency to slide back into the ‘series’
model. Implied also in this conscious action is a question of protecting the very act of
teaching itself, the relation that is teaching. If Sartre is to be believed, then with a little
pushing it might be argued that to work within a serialization (i.e. a school, district, or
board are all possibilities) is to relinquish any chance of relationship between parts of
the series. More specifically, one might claim that a genuine or authentic relationship
between equal humans, who are ends in and of themselves and not merely means to the
ends of another, would in fact be impossible between students, between teacher and
student, and between teachers. And, for at least some, this would mean that the very act
of teaching itself would be irrevocably compromised without the kind of conscious,
collective, and ongoing action Sartre advocates.
By the ‘pledge’, Sartre’s second component for ongoing group maintenance, he means
the collective creation of systems of values or of constitutions which, as each member
understands, restricts their individual freedom but provides a sense of ownership in and
belonging to the resultant group. Publicly affirmed commitments also provide a shared
context and a democratic, as opposed to autocratic, position from which educators may
question individual actions. An example of this might be the ‘full value contract’ work
that is done in many outdoor education programs and which has found its way into
selective classrooms. This activity involves a period of time in which individuals within
the group begin to get to know each other, work together, and encounter challenges.
As such they start, and are asked, in response to educational activities, to form some
operating norms for their particular group. The difference from the more common
approaches to rules is that these norms, once agreed upon, are not established by the
teacher, nor are they policed by the teacher, nor are they implicitly arrived at as if through
happenstance. In the full value contract all the members in the group are involved in the
design and creation of the rules of conduct through which the group will guide its own
behaviour. Depending on the depth and complexity of the process the resulting docu-
ment can range from a set of rules to live by and interact with to a living document with
the weight of a constitution. Interestingly enough, and free of a Sartrean theoretical
underpinning as far as I can tell, these documents are brought to bear on the entire group
through some kind of public ‘commitment ceremony’. This pledge-making process,
whereby each member publicly asserts a commitment to act within the spirit of the
contract and to assist in supporting others to do so as well, is in line with Sartre’s
thought. Often this pledging process ends with some kind of token, a bracelet or
bandanna, being given, presumably both as a reminder of the pledge and a means to
identify members of the group.
The third component for ongoing group maintenance, praxis, is seen as thoughtful
action freely taken towards a specified goal. Educators must work towards a time when
their students consciously grasp their own creative potential and identify the active role
they can play in order to realize a better world. Students must be allowed to recognize the
active role they can play in determining the future. Students who see themselves as
important members in the creation and confirmation of communities are becoming

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Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
 From Waiting for the Bus to Storming the Bastille 193

more conscious of themselves, more capable in relationships and, ultimately, more

thoughtful in the project of creating those inclusive and evolving communities. Educa-
tion must allow for students to create themselves within the context of the group, to
provide a rich supply of alternatives, and to free their imaginations, moving from
discovery to conflict and thence to resolution, which is the Sartrean dialectic of freedom.
The danger of a serialization of education, beyond its questionable efficacy, is that it
debilitates the dialectic, the vital interaction of the learning situation, the dynamism of
conflicting ideas, and the express requirement for individuals to reflect, synthesize, come
together, and create.

Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank key colleagues, Drs. P. Blenkinsop, C. Beeman, and C. Bingham, and
two reviewers for this journal for their thoughtful comments and constructive help in bringing this
paper to fruition.

Notes
1. For further reading with regard to classroom community see:Thayer-Bacon, 1998; Noddings,
2005; Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004.
2. For those who are interested there was quite a vibrant discussion of Sartre and education
throughout the 1970s and into the early 80s.The reasons for this are quite varied and complex
but include a philosophic sense that Sartre was too individualistic in orientation. Unfortu-
nately much of this assessment was built upon his earlier work which, as Burstow has pointed
out, misses the ‘more liberal views of human relations which Sartre developed as he got older’
(Burstow, 1983, p. 173). My own view is that this ‘radical conversion’ of Sartre began with his
World War II experiences and can be seen, in their infancy, in The War Diaries.
3. In his work Sartre distinguishes several forms of groupings that he places under the heading
of ‘collective’. For our purposes we will focus on what he identifies as the ‘direct series’.
4. Gordon (1985) suggests that part of the reason for this reticence, as of 1985, is the academic
focus on the analytic/scientific, thus the need to divorce the academic project from dialectic
reason. I would suggest that, although possible in 1985, this reason fails to explain the next
quarter century of silence which, beyond the possibility that Sartre has nothing to say with
regards to education, might be a complex interplay of assumed understanding of the existen-
tialism of the mid-20th century, shifts in educational philosophy, under-currents of political/
social reality, change in the explicit presence of scarcity and intolerability in the Western
world, etc.
5. In his play No Exit (Sartre, 1955), for example, each of the three characters is obliged to be
constantly in the company of the other two and yet cannot overcome the fact that each is
simultaneously alone.
6. It is important to recognize that Sartre’s focus is on the process of group formation with
settings that might be framed as ‘institutional’ (e.g. government, private enterprise, education,
organized religion, etc.) and, for the Marxist, construed as troublesome with regards to the
formation of relationships between and amongst the ‘workers’. He is not claiming that this is
only way to form a group or that groups might necessarily arise in this way. One might
consider the example of an extended family or a sports team or a group drawn together
through a shared tragedy.
7. For further practical information on these kinds of projects see: Levy, 1996; Armstrong,
Connolly & Saville, 1994; Sobel, 2004.

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Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
194 Sean Blenkinsop

8. Sartre’s ironic point is that an object, bus, originally designed to serve people provides the best
vantage point from which to view the serialization that it facilitates.
9. This is the kind of genuine group Sartre is in search of.
10. This seeming choice allows managers, those who make meaning, to justify what may be an
oppressive process as being ‘freely chosen’ by the workers.
11. A situation becomes intolerable when an individual discovers the possibility that there are
other options and that his/her situation is in fact contingent.
12. By aligned, Sartre means engaged in the same project of self and group transformation and
enactment.
13. This is not a suggestion that individuality, heterogeneity, or difference is lost in this process.
In fact, precisely the opposite since each member both constitutes the group and is themselves
constituted, in their uniqueness, by the group. Educationally, part of the process of a large
group project beyond successful completion is to allow for the possibility of individuals in the
group to be recognized for, and to self-recognize, particular strengths, abilities, challenges, and
idiosyncrasies. Sartre’s group-in-fusion can be understood as the kind of pluralism Thayer-
Bacon is pointing to in her book, Beyond Liberal Democracy in Schools.
14. In Sartre’s terms this would be the practico-inert gaining purchase by drawing the institution
away from the engaged, alive, free place of the group and towards the passive, alienated,
oppressed position of the inert collective.
15. Sartre acknowledges that he is simplifying this example and that frequently exploitation is
more insidious since it uses separate collectives within the seriality against one another,
thereby fostering antagonisms which keep these smaller collectives from truly recognizing the
shared oppression.
16. One might, for educational context, take the Hitler youth movement as an example.
17. Within the context of this discussion this caution is very important for education which has a
habit of defining the ‘average’ student, or outlining the ‘good’ ‘math’ ‘teacher’, or offering ‘age
appropriate’ activities, interventions, or psychological sign posts.
18. For Sartre bad faith, is self-deception; it is lying to oneself. The construct of any lie involves
one who knows that it is untrue and one who is deceived. In the case of bad faith they are the
same person, so within the individual the truth is both known and unknown simultaneously.
‘Know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in the capacity as the one
deceived’ (Sartre, 1992, p. 89). Sartre (1992) offers a long list of potential forms of bad faith
in Being and Nothingness. Simone de Beauvoir calls these the ‘tricks of dishonesty’ in her Ethics
of Ambiguity.
19. Counterfinalities might be considered the ‘side effects’ of any action. Many of these are
unforeseen but Sartre certainly leaves open the option that they might be foreseen. Educa-
tional examples might include the results of particular kinds of standardized testing which is
explicitly meant to have the consequence of finding poor teachers yet have a counterfinality of
failing students.
20. For Sartre, responsibility is the necessary companion of choice.
21. Here the kind of obstacle may, and should, vary depending upon the particulars of the
students, teachers, curriculum, etc.
22. For further exploration of these discussions see: Greene, 1973; Denton, 1972; Arendt, 1990.

References
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Burstow , B. (1983) Sartre: A possible foundation for education theory, Journal of Philosophy of
Education, 17:2, pp. 171–185.

© 2010 The Author

Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
 From Waiting for the Bus to Storming the Bastille 195

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© 2010 The Author

Educational Philosophy and Theory © 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia