"A household based in North London wants to find an remarkable and qualified tutor to assist their most junior child on his first steps to turning into an English gentleman."
When reading this listing, you might easily overlook the term "initial stages" as mere a turn of phrase.
However, it may be the most important element of this unusual employment listing, as it aims to hire a teacher for a one-year-old.
Hundreds of applications have already been sent in since the unnamed family advertised their request for the £180k-a-year tutor, who must be "someone very special".
During the past few weeks, the advert has gained interest in the news, with many asking why?
Progressive Approach
Adam Caller, CEO and founder of Tutors International, which is assisting the family in their search, explained that despite early scepticism, he viewed the concept "visionary", and "innovative".
When he spoke with the family, he said they recognized the unconventional character of their requirement, and how immature their son is.
Nevertheless, they clarified that they "preferred not to postpone any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had waited until their firstborn was five, and by that age "cultural conditioning had already taken hold".
What precisely did the family indicate by "cultural leaning"?
It's "comprehensive", he replied. "How you eat, how you speak".
He explained the elder child had adopted "extremely delicate, body language" from the family, and had adopted their cultural norms. The family explained to Adam they did not want history to recur with their infant.
The strategy: To hire a UK tutor, who should speak with standard English accent, to shape the baby from the very start.
Osmotic Learning
"A lot of the development at the outset here is rather acquired indirectly," explained Adam.
It's via this subtle influence that the family are expecting the child will adopt the UK customs they want to cultivate.
He explained the tutor needed to be an individual who attended "the right kinds of schools – the same kinds of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The instructor must be the appropriate candidate, they'll be doing things they don't even know they're doing, just naturally," he said.
Cost Not Relevant
The family explained to the expert the selected educator should ideally also have familiarity of or passion in riding, alpine skiing, artistic pursuits and musical activities so as to shape the child in a broad spectrum of interests.
Additionally though, he said the family wanted the tutor to register the child on a range of lessons so the child would be "pony-riding and picking up an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's view, guiding their son grow into a "English gentleman" will bring about achievement and provide access.
"Considering the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's certainly a status symbol," he comments.
Yet, despite all this tutelage in "UK identity", might the child absorb so-called cultural leaning from the multicultural family he lives with in any case?
"Certainly", said he. "The parents know this could fail, but they've just taken the view of, 'we should try and let's go as quickly as we can', because the price of it is irrelevant," he said.
Impractical
A number of in the education sector who express those concerns.
Peter Cui, chief executive of an educational organization, who supplies individual instructors, wrote that "the journey of becoming bicultural, or indeed, discovering oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not engineered."
The expert wrote that he had relocated from Asia to the Britain at the age of seven, and had been educated knowing and embodying two backgrounds. He progressed to study at the University of Cambridge.
"The concept that an individual can act as a living vessel of UK identity, someone who can possibly transfer the attributes of a British gentleman onto a one-year-old child, seems to me idealistic and unrealistic," he wrote.
"Based on my background, employing a quintessentially British tutor from early childhood will does not instantly achieve the goal they hope for.
"I did not have such a tutor, and nevertheless I have been privileged enough to live many of the experiences they aspire for their son."
He continued: "The fact is, personal identity should not be imposed from the outside influences; it must be selected, and it must originate internally."
Buying Britishness
Of course, Britishness is something the CEO hopes can be instructed – and sold.
"I believe the fact that the global community holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
