The first poem we read in my poetry class was “Uneasy Rider” by Diane Wakoski. The instructor calmly asked us what we thought it was about, and everyone sheepishly kept silent. She asked again, and still no one answered. She then pounded on the table to each syllable, belting, “IT’S ABOUT FUCK-ING. WHAT ELSE COULD IT BE ABOUT? Honestly, there’s no way we’ll be able to have an honest discussion about modern literature if you won’t grow up and talk about it. This is life.” It changed my life. Yeah, she could have been fired over it, but she took that risk to broaden our horizons.

When I grew up, I became a teacher myself, and I remembered how important those risks are to opening up the minds of developing children, whether I have to risk a dicey discussion of world religions in a peace education course for fourth graders, or the origins of the earth in a science class, or talk about sex to teenagers who are already having it. Children grow up whether we want them to or not; if we insist on narrowing their worldviews to comfortably fit within our own, we can’t complain when we get scientists who can’t think, artists who can’t express themselves, and writers that can’t write.

It’s time we realize as a society that progress happens at frontiers. Frontiers are often uncomfortable places, but if we never let our children go there, we do them more hurt than exploration ever could.