"A family residing in north London wants to find an exceptional and skilled instructor to support their smallest child on his first steps to becoming an British gentleman."
Looking at this listing, you might readily miss the phrase "initial stages" as simple a turn of phrase.
However, it might be the crucial aspect of this unique position posting, as it aims to hire a teacher for a infant.
Hundreds of responses have already been sent in since the anonymous family posted their request for the highly paid tutor, who must be "a uniquely qualified person".
Over the last few weeks, the advert has attracted interest in the press, with numerous questioning why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is assisting the family in their search, said that despite early skepticism, he considered the concept "far sighted", and "advanced".
When he spoke with the family, he noted they appreciated the atypical nature of their requirement, and how young their son is.
Nevertheless, they explained that they "preferred not to postpone any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that point "cultural conditioning had by then taken hold".
What precisely does the family refer to by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam responded. "The way you eat, the manner you speak".
He said the firstborn had absorbed "very nuanced, unspoken signals" from the family, and had adopted their cultural ways. The family informed him they hoped to prevent the same situation to happen again with their infant.
The strategy: To hire a UK tutor, who should speak with RP, to influence the baby from day one.
Subtle Influence
"Much of the development at the beginning here is rather osmotic," said Adam.
It's via this subtle influence that the family are expecting the child will adopt the UK customs they wish to instil.
The consultant explained the tutor needed to be someone who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – comparable categories of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The tutor must be the right kind of person, they'll be carrying out things they may not realize they're doing, simply by nature," he added.
Money No Object
The family told him the chosen tutor should ideally also have understanding of or passion in horse riding, winter sports, artistic pursuits and instrumental training so as to shape the child in a broad spectrum of interests.
Furthermore though, he said the family desired the tutor to register the child on a range of courses so the child would be "horseback riding and starting an tool by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, assisting their son develop into a "English gentleman" will bring about accomplishment and open doors.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's definitely a class statement," he comments.
But, in spite of all this tutelage in "UK identity", would the child pick up so-called cultural influence from the international family he is raised by anyway?
"Certainly", said he. "They understand this may not work, but they've merely embraced the attitude of, 'why not attempt it and we'll proceed as quickly as we can', because the expense of it is not a concern," he said.
Impractical
Several in the education sector who express similar concerns.
Another CEO, chief executive of an educational organization, who also offer personal educators, wrote that "the journey of embracing two identities, or actually, becoming oneself, is something that must be lived into, not manufactured."
The expert noted that he had emigrated from the Far East to the Britain at the time of 7 years old, and had been brought up experiencing and living both cultures. He continued to learn at the University of Cambridge.
"The idea that an individual can act as a embodiment of Britishness, a person who can in some way impart the qualities of a British gentleman onto a one-year-old child, strikes me as optimistic and impractical," he commented.
"From my perspective, engaging a distinctly UK tutor from babyhood will will not automatically produce the result they want.
"I did not have that kind of mentor, and yet I have been fortunate enough to live numerous of the situations they desire for their son."
He stated: "The truth is, cultural identity should not be imposed from the outside; it must be embraced, and it must originate internally."
Acquiring Englishness
Certainly, English culture is something Adam thinks can be taught – and marketed.
"In my view the situation that the global community holds us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
