"A family based in North London wants to find an exceptional and experienced tutor to support their smallest child on his first steps to turning into an English gentleman."
When reading this listing, you might easily overlook the term "initial stages" as simple figurative language.
However, it may be the most important part of this unusual position posting, as it aims to find a teacher for a 12-month-old.
Numerous of applications have since been received since the unnamed family published their search for the £180,000 per year tutor, who must be "a uniquely qualified person".
In recent few weeks, the listing has attracted notice across the media, with many asking why?
Forward-Thinking Method
The CEO, head and founder of Tutors International, which is supporting the family in their quest, explained that despite first skepticism, he viewed the idea "visionary", and "innovative".
When he spoke with the family, he said they understood the atypical nature of their requirement, and how immature their son is.
But, they clarified that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to get a tutor, as they had postponed until their older child was five, and by that stage "cultural bias had already set in".
What exactly does the family mean by "cultural bias"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam responded. "The way you eat, the manner you speak".
He said the older sibling had absorbed "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had adopted their cultural ways. The family told the consultant they hoped to prevent this pattern to recur with their infant.
The strategy: To hire a British tutor, who must speak with Received Pronunciation, to guide the baby right from the beginning.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the education at the beginning here is kind of acquired indirectly," stated Adam.
It's through this natural absorption that the family are aiming the child will adopt the British traits they wish to impart.
He explained the tutor must be someone who studied at "prestigious academies – similar types of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The tutor simply needs to be the suitable individual, they'll be carrying out things they aren't even aware they're doing, effortlessly," he said.
Expense Not a Factor
The family told Adam the chosen tutor should ideally also have knowledge of or interest in riding, alpine skiing, creative fields and music so as to influence the child in a diverse set of interests.
More than that though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to enrol the child on a range of lessons so the child would be "equestrian training and picking up an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's perspective, guiding their son develop into a "British gentleman" will result in achievement and open doors.
"Taking into account the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's certainly a social class indicator," he adds.
Yet, despite all this guidance in "Britishness", would the child absorb alleged cultural bias from the globally influenced family he resides with in any case?
"Certainly", said he. "They know this might not succeed, but they've just taken the attitude of, 'let's give it a go and let's go as soon as we can', because the price of it is not relevant," he said.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
A number of in the education sector who express those doubts.
An education leader, head and founder of an educational organization, who supplies private tutors, wrote that "the process of becoming bicultural, or indeed, becoming oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not manufactured."
The expert noted that he had relocated from the Far East to the United Kingdom at the age of seven, and had been brought up knowing and practicing both cultures. He continued to learn at Cambridge University.
"The notion that an individual can act as a embodiment of Britishness, someone who can in some way transplant the qualities of a British gentleman onto a one-year-old child, seems to me naive and unrealistic," he wrote.
"In my experience, engaging a distinctly British tutor from infancy will does not necessarily create the goal they want.
"I did not have such a figure, and however I have been lucky enough to experience numerous of the situations they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The fact is, cultural identity should not be imposed from the outside influences; it must be selected, and it must come from within."
Acquiring Englishness
Certainly, Britishness is something the CEO thinks can be educated – and marketed.
"I think the fact that the international society views us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
