A Critical Examination of Well-Being as the Destination of Future Education: Focusing on the Concept of Ethical Yangsaeng

This study critically examines the concept of well-being positioned as the destination of future education in the OECD’s Education 2030 project and seeks to reorient the direction of well-being education by reinterpreting it through the concept of ethical yangsaeng (養生). Although the OECD seeks to conceptualize well-being by aligning it with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the notion remains conceptually ambiguous and leaves room for interpretations that reinforce an individual-centered, competency-based education framework. Moreover, contemporary discourses on well-being, shaped by positive psychology and neoliberal self-management, tend to commodify and individualize well-being, thereby distancing it from the ethical and practical purposes of education. By analyzing the conceptual framing of well-being in the OECD Education 2030 project, this paper reconsiders well-being as a communal and existential educational goal under the conditions of the Anthropocene. Drawing on Confucian traditions, it explores the ethical implications of yangsaeng as a mode of life regulation and self-cultivation that integrates individual existence with communal and environmental conditions. The study argues that well-being as the destination of future education should not be reduced to performance indicators or individual competencies, but should instead be grounded in ethical reflections on collective existence. Finally, it proposes a critical examination of neoliberal well-being culture and suggests yangsaeng as an ethical framework for developing practical alternatives in well-being education, contributing to future curriculum design and empirical research.