Can education for sustainable development (ESD) policies help to create a more sustainable society? In the article I argue that contemporary secondary school curriculum policies relating to ESD are rhetorical devices that will achieve little towards resolving global problems. I suggest that the conceptualization of SD is itself fundamentally flawed and inevitably restricts the scope of possible policy solutions. I analyse three ESD curriculum policy texts to reveal their concealments, silences and blocks to enquiry, demonstrating how their rhetorical forms make them readily assimilable into dominant economic discourse. I then introduce a recent UK Government Report explaining the failure in implementing ESD policies in the school curriculum and I expose how this analysis is a further demonstration of the problems in the prevailing policy perspective. In conclusion, I propose a new direction for progress in curriculum policy regarding sustainability. (Contains 1 note.)