From Participation to Agonism: Rethinking European Citizenship Education for the Digital Era

Drawing on a design-based intervention in active European citizenship education, this article explores the extent to which participatory citizenship education equips primary pupils with the necessary democratic resilience in the digital age. It argues that teachers’ constant search for consensus in the primary classroom has become a democratic liability in a digital public era of polarisation. My Big Friendly Guide to the EU which was implemented across five Irish primary schools in 2018–2019 with 458 pupils aged five to twelve, examines what participatory European citizenship education looks like in practice. Data shows that knowledge gains were substantial, ranging from 16 to 66 percentage points across identity, institutional, and national indicator domains. Yet qualitative observation reveals a consistent finding that teachers, who largely felt they had insufficient substantive knowledge of the EU, pushed towards consensus when discussions generated unresolved disagreement. The article discusses how the piloting of this educational programme in participatory citizenship education highlights gaps in pupils’ democratic resilience. It argues that a solution could be integrating Mouffe’s theory of agonistic democracy and Ruitenberg’s application to pedagogy. This would ensure that pupils are equipped to resist platform polarisation and algorithmic selection. It further contends that this dual approach cannot be achieved without structured teacher training in powerful knowledge on the European Union and agonism, which a digitally aware civic education requires.