"A household based in north London is looking for an exceptional and skilled tutor to guide their youngest child on his early path to turning into an British gentleman."
When reading this advertisement, you might easily overlook the wording "initial stages" as just a turn of phrase.
Yet, it may be the most important part of this unique job advert, as it aims to hire a mentor for a 12-month-old.
Hundreds of applications have already been received since the unnamed family published their call for the £180,000 per year tutor, who has to be "an exceptional individual".
In recent few weeks, the listing has received attention across the press, with several questioning why?
Progressive Approach
A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is supporting the family in their search, stated that in spite of early skepticism, he found the concept "visionary", and "advanced".
When he spoke with the family, he noted they appreciated the unconventional character of their requirement, and how young their son is.
Nevertheless, they clarified that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to get a tutor, as they had held off until their elder sibling was five, and by that age "cultural influence had by then taken hold".
What exactly does the family indicate by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "everything", the expert replied. "The way you eat, the manner you speak".
He stated the elder child had adopted "extremely delicate, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had assumed their cultural habits. The family explained to Adam they wished to avoid history to recur with their new baby.
The plan: To bring in a English tutor, who needs to speak with RP, to influence the baby from day one.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the education at the outset here is kind of acquired indirectly," stated the expert.
It's by means of this osmosis that the family are expecting the child will acquire the English characteristics they wish to impart.
Adam said the tutor needed to be someone who studied at "the right kinds of schools – similar types of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The educator simply needs to be the right kind of person, they'll be doing things they may not realize they're doing, simply by nature," he commented.
Cost Not Relevant
The family informed him the selected educator should preferably also have familiarity of or passion in horse riding, skiing, the arts and music so as to inspire the child in a broad spectrum of passions.
More than that though, he stated the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a range of lessons so the child would be "pony-riding and learning an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's view, assisting their son develop into a "English gentleman" will result in accomplishment and create opportunities.
"Taking into account the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's definitely a status symbol," he adds.
However, notwithstanding all this tutelage in "Britishness", could the child adopt what is termed cultural influence from the globally influenced family he is raised by anyway?
"Certainly", said Adam. "They know this may not work, but they've simply adopted the perspective of, 'let's give it a go and we should start as soon as we can', because the expense of it is not relevant," he stated.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
A number of in the education sector who have these doubts.
Another CEO, CEO and founder of an educational organization, who provides individual instructors, wrote that "the journey of becoming bicultural, or actually, becoming oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not engineered."
He wrote that he had emigrated from Asia to the UK at the age of seven, and had been educated experiencing and embodying two backgrounds. He progressed to study at Cambridge University.
"The concept that an individual can serve as a living vessel of Britishness, a person who can somehow impart the attributes of a English gentleman onto a one-year-old child, seems to me optimistic and unfeasible," he wrote.
"From my perspective, employing a distinctly UK tutor from infancy will does not instantly achieve the outcome they desire.
"I did not have that kind of mentor, and yet I have been lucky enough to live several of the situations they desire for their son."
He continued: "The reality is, cultural identity cannot be forced from the outside; it must be selected, and it must come from within."
Buying Britishness
Of course, UK identity is something Adam hopes can be educated – and marketed.
"In my view the reality that the international society regards us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
