"Parents residing in north London seeks an exceptional and skilled instructor to assist their youngest child on his initial journey to growing into an English gentleman."
When reading this advertisement, you might easily miss the phrase "initial stages" as just a turn of phrase.
However, it might be the most important aspect of this unique employment listing, as it seeks to hire a mentor for a infant.
Numerous of applications have now been submitted since the unidentified family published their search for the £180k-a-year tutor, who must be "an exceptional individual".
Over the last few weeks, the post has received interest across the news, with several wondering why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, head and founder of an education consultancy, which is helping the family in their hunt, said that despite initial scepticism, he considered the concept "visionary", and "advanced".
When he met the family, he said they recognized the atypical character of their requirement, and how young their son is.
However, they stated that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to get a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that stage "cultural influence had already become established".
What precisely does the family refer to by "cultural bias"?
It's "comprehensive", the expert replied. "How you eat, how you speak".
He said the firstborn had adopted "very nuanced, body language" from the family, and had taken on their cultural habits. The family explained to him they did not want history to happen again with their new baby.
The plan: To engage a British tutor, who should speak with standard English accent, to shape the baby from the very start.
Natural Absorption
"A great deal of the development at the start here is kind of absorbed naturally," explained Adam.
It's via this osmosis that the family are aiming the child will acquire the English characteristics they aim to instil.
Adam explained the tutor must be somebody who attended "the right kinds of schools – similar types of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The educator must be the right kind of person, they'll be carrying out things they don't even know they're doing, just naturally," he said.
Expense Not a Factor
The family explained to him the chosen tutor should ideally also have familiarity of or passion in riding, alpine skiing, creative fields and music so as to shape the child in a wide range of interests.
More than that though, he said the family wanted the tutor to enrol the child on a selection of classes so the child would be "equestrian training and learning an tool by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's minds, assisting their son develop into a "UK sophisticate" will bring about accomplishment and create opportunities.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a social class indicator," he comments.
However, notwithstanding all this guidance in "Britishness", would the child absorb what is termed cultural leaning from the globally influenced family he resides with anyway?
"Certainly", answered he. "They realize this may not work, but they've just taken the attitude of, 'we should try and let's go as quickly as we can', because the cost of it is not a concern," he said.
Overly Optimistic
Several in the private teaching field who express these doubts.
Peter Cui, CEO and founder of a tutoring service, who supplies private tutors, commented that "the process of adopting dual cultures, or in fact, discovering oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not designed."
The expert noted that he had emigrated from China to the UK at the time of childhood, and had been raised knowing and embodying both cultures. He progressed to be educated at Cambridge University.
"The concept that an individual can act as a embodiment of UK identity, someone who can somehow impart the characteristics of a UK sophisticate upon a one-year-old child, seems to me optimistic and impractical," he wrote.
"From my perspective, engaging a distinctly English tutor from babyhood will will not automatically create the outcome they desire.
"I did not have such a tutor, and however I have been privileged enough to experience several of the opportunities they aspire for their son."
He added: "The fact is, self-identity should not be imposed from the external environment; it must be embraced, and it must come from within."
Purchasing UK Culture
Of course, Britishness is something the CEO hopes can be instructed – and commercialized.
"In my view the fact that the global community holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
