Don’t isolate your kids. Even a school filled with kids raised by conservative parents is going to be better than sheltering your kids in a bubble.
I went to a rural school in the middle of Northern Wisconsin. I was raised by hyper conservative parents who are now MAGAts. They raised me to be homophobic, racist, and raised me in a cult.
When I went to high school there, I became friends with what we called “emo” kids back in the day. My best friend throughout high school was a lesbian girl I sat with at math class. She helped show me that LGBTQ+ people can actually be pretty freaking awesome and broke down my parent’s years of homophobic indoctrination by simply being herself. She introduced me to her other LGBTQ+ friends at the school and it was the best 2 years of primary school I ever had.
Humans are social creatures and you still “control” the majority of your kid’s time at home and on the weekends, as well as summer breaks. As long as you reinforce and foster kind-hearted humans, they’ll not only turn out fine, but they’ll also probably help someone in the same situation I was in. That’s how you change the world for the better, as a parent.
Source: Father of three boys in Texas (not completely by choice…my family lives here)
I used to live in a Northern Wisconsin town almost entirely comprised of tourism and snow birds for an economy from May to September. Most were people from Chicago and Milwaukee that moved “a little too fast” for someone who lived in the area, so they were easy to spot.
Once school started up, the place was an absolute ghost town. All of downtown completely shut down except one bar. The hotels either shuttered during the winter or operated a single floor of rooms. The population would drop by ~80%.
I loved living in The Great Northwoods of WI, as it’s absolutely gorgeous up there half the year, but I don’t miss standing at the bus stop when it’s -40F wind chills or shovelling out my car to drive somewhere.
Stargazing was incredible in the winter, though.