"A family located in the northern part of London seeks an extraordinary and skilled educator to assist their smallest child on his first steps to turning into an English gentleman."
Upon seeing this listing, you might easily overlook the wording "beginning" as simple an expression.
However, it might be the most significant part of this distinctive employment listing, as it aims to hire a teacher for a one-year-old.
Many of submissions have already been received since the anonymous family advertised their search for the £180,000 per year tutor, who has to be "someone very special".
In recent few weeks, the advert has attracted interest in the news, with many asking why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is assisting the family in their quest, said that despite first doubt, he found the concept "forward-looking", and "advanced".
When he consulted the family, he mentioned they recognized the unusual aspect of their request, and how early in age their son is.
However, they stated that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to get a tutor, as they had held off until their firstborn was five, and by that age "cultural bias had by then set in".
What exactly did the family mean by "cultural bias"?
It's "everything", he answered. "How you eat, the manner you speak".
He explained the firstborn had adopted "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had adopted their cultural ways. The family explained to Adam they hoped to prevent history to repeat itself with their younger child.
The plan: To bring in a British tutor, who must speak with standard English accent, to influence the baby from the very start.
Natural Absorption
"Much of the learning at the beginning here is kind of absorbed naturally," said Adam.
It's via this natural absorption that the family are expecting the child will adopt the English characteristics they wish to cultivate.
The consultant explained the tutor needed to be someone who studied at "the right kinds of schools – comparable categories of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The tutor must be the right kind of person, they'll be carrying out things they don't even know they're doing, simply by nature," he added.
Cost Not Relevant
The family informed him the selected educator should ideally also have familiarity of or interest in horse riding, skiing, the arts and music so as to influence the child in a wide range of hobbies.
More than that though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a selection of lessons so the child would be "equestrian training and starting an instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, assisting their son grow into a "UK sophisticate" will result in accomplishment and create opportunities.
"Considering the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's definitely a social class indicator," he notes.
Yet, notwithstanding all this guidance in "English culture", would the child adopt what is termed cultural bias from the multicultural family he is raised by regardless?
"Yes", replied he. "They know this might not succeed, but they've just taken the attitude of, 'why not attempt it and we'll proceed as early as we can', because the expense of it is irrelevant," he said.
Overly Optimistic
There are some in the education sector who share those doubts.
Another CEO, chief executive of Blue Education, who supplies individual instructors, commented that "the process of becoming bicultural, or actually, forming one's identity, is something that must be grown into, not designed."
Peter wrote that he had relocated from the Far East to the United Kingdom at the period of childhood, and had been raised experiencing and living both cultures. He progressed to study at Cambridge University.
"The notion that a single person can function as a living vessel of English culture, someone who can possibly impart the characteristics of a British gentleman upon a infant child, seems to me optimistic and impractical," he commented.
"In my experience, engaging a distinctly British tutor from early childhood will not necessarily achieve the goal they hope for.
"I wasn't provided with such a tutor, and nevertheless I have been privileged enough to live several of the situations they desire for their son."
He added: "The truth is, self-identity cannot be forced from the external environment; it must be chosen, and it must come from within."
Buying Britishness
Of course, English culture is something the expert thinks can be taught – and sold.
"I think the reality that the global community views us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
