Education for Sustainability in Newark’s Public Schools Reconsidered: Ecological Problems within American Racial Domination

Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) is one of United Nations’ program to achieve sustainability in both cultural and natural ecosystem. Sustainability in education, as one of the goals in SDG aims to provide equal access to education for all children across race and social class. In United States of America, SDG USA seeks to improve social mobility, educational access and sustainable environmental development. This paper is on the opinion that sustainability development in USA, especially in educational field should be reconsidered based on case study on Newark, New Jersey. The neighborhood which is dominated by African-American suffers from disproportionate access to education as the whites has more opportunity to achieve higher education. Responding to this phenomenon, this paper applies social ecological approach as is theorized by Murray Bookchin. Bookchin argues that ecological problems cannot be understood, let alone solved without first resolve the question of class, race, and gender as the root. In other word, human domination of other human remains as important as human domination of the environment. The analysis is conducted using the discourse analysis framework as theorized by Van Dijk (2005). This paper concludes that SDG USA concerning sustainable development should address the more pressing issue related to racism.