"Parents based in North London is looking for an exceptional and experienced instructor to guide their youngest child on his first steps to turning into an English gentleman."
Upon seeing this listing, you might easily miss the phrase "initial stages" as simple an expression.
However, it may be the crucial part of this distinctive job advert, as it aims to recruit a tutor for a infant.
Numerous of submissions have already been sent in since the unnamed family advertised their request for the £180k-a-year tutor, who has to be "an exceptional individual".
Over the last few weeks, the post has received attention throughout the media, with numerous questioning why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, head and founder of Tutors International, which is assisting the family in their search, stated that in spite of early skepticism, he found the plan "far sighted", and "progressive".
When he met the family, he said they appreciated the atypical character of their request, and how immature their son is.
Nevertheless, they explained that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that age "cultural conditioning had already become established".
But what does the family mean by "cultural bias"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam answered. "The way you eat, the manner you speak".
He said the elder child had adopted "extremely delicate, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had taken on their cultural norms. The family told the consultant they did not want history to happen again with their infant.
The strategy: To hire a UK tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to shape the baby from day one.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the learning at the start here is rather acquired indirectly," explained the expert.
It's via this natural absorption that the family are hoping the child will pick up the English characteristics they want to impart.
He noted the tutor must be someone who attended "prestigious academies – the same kinds of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The educator just has to be the right kind of person, they'll be doing things they may not realize they're doing, effortlessly," he added.
Money No Object
The family explained to Adam the successful candidate should ideally also have familiarity of or passion in horse riding, winter sports, creative fields and instrumental training so as to shape the child in a wide range of hobbies.
Furthermore though, he stated the family hoped the tutor to register the child on a variety of lessons so the child would be "equestrian training and starting an musical instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's minds, helping their son become a "English gentleman" will result in accomplishment and provide access.
"For all the pros and cons of that, because it's definitely a class statement," he adds.
Yet, notwithstanding all this guidance in "Britishness", would the child pick up so-called cultural leaning from the multicultural family he lives with in any case?
"Certainly", answered the CEO. "The parents know this could fail, but they've merely embraced the view of, 'why not attempt it and let's go as soon as we can', because the expense of it is not relevant," he stated.
Impractical
Several in the education sector who express these doubts.
An education leader, chief executive of a tutoring service, who supplies individual instructors, stated that "the development of becoming bicultural, or indeed, becoming oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not engineered."
Peter explained that he had moved from Asia to the Britain at the period of childhood, and had been raised knowing and living both cultures. He continued to study at the University of Cambridge.
"The idea that one individual can serve as a embodiment of Britishness, an individual who can somehow impart the attributes of a British gentleman to a one-year-old child, strikes me as idealistic and unrealistic," he wrote.
"In my experience, engaging a typically British tutor from infancy will does not necessarily produce the outcome they want.
"I never had such a figure, and however I have been privileged enough to live numerous of the experiences they hope for their son."
He continued: "The truth is, cultural identity can not be forced from the outside; it must be embraced, and it must originate internally."
Buying Britishness
Certainly, UK identity is something the CEO thinks can be educated – and sold.
"I believe the situation that the world regards us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
