At Jungle Academy we hold space for engaging classes and for students to interact with each other in a free, safe and dynamic manner.
Our framework is detailed in our extensive and clear Student Handbook, which is mailed out to all enrolled families and can also be found on the SPACES communication platform. If you are an enrolled family and have not seen the Student Handbook please get in touch with the Office.
Connection Times regularly dip into this handbook on all manner of subjects and conversations throughout each Cycle.
We have spent a lot of time thoughtfully crafting an environment where a student’s developing world view and moral system can be nurtured, erstwhile being exposed to other diverse view points and challenges.
At Jungle Academy we are not in the business of promoting or dispensing certain view points or ideas over and above another. Jungle Academy is not a place where policing opinions, picking favoured ideologies or preferences takes place.
We are clear that the principal place for dispensing ideology is the home.
In this regard a student’s view point of a certain topic receives respect, but is never allowed to impinge upon another’s viewpoint.
By way of example, a parent may instil strong vegan values into their child, but it is not the responsibility of Jungle Academy to make sure that all students are living up to this set of adopted values while on-site.
However, if another student actively criticizes veganism, or coerces someone else to eat the food they wouldn’t usually eat, we would intervene promptly. This intervention is comprehensively covered by the values and guidelines already set down in our Student Handbook.
As you may probably agree, banning meat on-site, to insulate a child who is vegan from the temptation of trying another child's lunch is inappropriate and unfair to the child who has opted for a meat-based diet.
This policy also extrapolates out to other contentious topics like, sugar, soda, oils, nuts*, diet, vaccines, face make-up, clothing or gender identity, etc.
Of course items that are illegal or inherently dangerous are not permitted on-site. Rules and guidelines set out in our Student Handbook are to make sure everyone's life choices are respected and not infringed or curbed.
We believe that if certain values have been agreed at home, then an out-of-home environment is an opportunity for the child to practice making the right choices, and the occasional mistake, for themselves, and to begin independently discerning between what is right and wrong for them. Building personal accountability is a key part of growing up and will be critical when, as young adults, they will be in much less friendly environments with exposure to all sorts of temptations and influences.
Our goal is to create confident young adults, who are able to both respect others' choices, while nurturing and protecting their own. We aim to offer a safe environment that is free from the dictates of an over-bearing governing ‘higher authority’ that prescribes one thing as good while another as bad. We are also careful to not have an environment so littered with other people's rules, restrictions and limitations, that students feel trapped and powerless to make decisions for themselves.
We are strong believers in individual freedoms and personal agency, and this comes from being empowered to make decisions for oneself. At Jungle Academy students have a freedom to make decisions, but also recognize that they will make mistakes, and that's fine.
In this sense, we are big proponents of not adding excess energy on to things that are essentially neutral.
A story springs to mind from an old friend, back in Hong Kong, who noted with surprise that a colleague's daughter, after visiting Singapore recounted with excitement how a key highlight of the whole trip was a visit to McDonald's. It occurred to him that by artificially adding an energy to McDonald's of it being 'bad' or 'for special occasions only', the girl had learned to elevate a visit there way beyond its actual real world value. My friend recounted how conversely his own son visited McDonald's on occasion and so had a neutral experience of the restaurant, as just one restaurant of many options. It was simply something that they did every once in a while and the experience spoke for itself. It was not treated as something special, so no overly positive or negative connotations skewed the experience. My friend would talk together with his son frequently as a family about food choices of course, with parents providing guidance on all options and their consequences, from the cost of the food, it's quality, the packaging, its impact on the world, and what it does to the body. As a result, the boy formed the ability to independently assess his own food choices, free from supplanted energies.
This thought has stuck with me and has been a guide in how we have raised our own daughter and now how we operate Jungle Academy today. Our goal is to craft a middle path, where students are not hidden or sheltered from the real world, and instead experience it with guidance and not overbearing direction from people of authority. Overtime young adults learn to discern and make distinctions on what is good for them and what are the consequences of their choices. This process is a life long lesson, littered with missteps and mistakes but the reward of growing a strong sense of personal agency makes the ups and downs worthwhile.
Our mission at Jungle Academy is clear, students learn best through their own, real world experiences, and the principal place for instilling students with ideology is in the home. What we do at Jungle Academy is create a carefully supervised melting pot for young adults to test-flight their beliefs and values with similar aged peers.
Of course, this isn't the only way for teens and tweens to learn and experience the world. There are many other ways to to raise young adults, and fortunately in this area we are blessed with a wide variety of learning options.
*Jungle Academy does not currently have anyone with life threatening dietary conditions and due to the small nature the project, we would first consult the community before anyone was enrolled.
Bravi! 👏 Well said.
Well said! Thank you for that.