The Thousand-Character Classic (Qianziwen) for Sustainable Development: Fostering Responsible Citizenship through Classical Ethical Values

This study explores educational opportunities to cultivate responsible citizenship among future generations through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in an era of grand transition. Focusing on the Thousand-Character Classic (Qianziwen), an East Asian classic, it investigates how the text’s embedded ethical values can contribute to ESD’s core objective of fostering responsible citizenship. To this end, the study reviewed the original text and major commentaries alongside academic and policy literature on ESD, including UNESCO’s ESD learning objectives. The analysis indicates that the work’s universal ethics—exemplified by benevolence (仁, ren), righteousness (義, yi), propriety (禮, li), and wisdom (智, zhi)—can be conceptually aligned with key ESD competencies, notably critical thinking, systems thinking, and integrated problem-solving. This alignment suggests actionable pathways through which classical wisdom can interface with contemporary sustainability discourse and underscores the scholarly significance of the modern reinterpretation of tradition. Ultimately, the study offers insights into an instructional model for ESD grounded in East Asian classics, thereby extending the scope of existing research and deriving practical policy implications for contextualizing sustainability education in Korea.