"A family located in North London is looking for an remarkable and experienced tutor to guide their most junior child on his first steps to becoming an British gentleman."
Upon seeing this advertisement, you might readily miss the term "initial stages" as just an expression.
However, it may be the most important element of this unique position posting, as it attempts to recruit a mentor for a one-year-old.
Numerous of submissions have now been submitted since the anonymous family published their request for the highly paid tutor, who must be "someone very special".
In recent few weeks, the post has gained interest throughout the news, with many wondering why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, head and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is helping the family in their quest, explained that in spite of early skepticism, he considered the concept "forward-looking", and "innovative".
When he spoke with the family, he said they appreciated the atypical nature of their demand, and how early in age their son is.
However, they clarified that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had postponed until their elder sibling was five, and by that age "cultural conditioning had already become established".
What precisely did the family indicate by "cultural bias"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam replied. "The manner you eat, the way you speak".
He said the elder child had picked up "very nuanced, unspoken signals" from the family, and had taken on their cultural ways. The family told Adam they hoped to prevent this pattern to happen again with their infant.
The strategy: To bring in a British tutor, who must speak with Received Pronunciation, to guide the baby right from the beginning.
Osmotic Learning
"A lot of the education at the outset here is kind of osmotic," said the expert.
It's through this subtle influence that the family are expecting the child will acquire the British traits they wish to impart.
Adam noted the tutor needed to be somebody who attended "the right kinds of schools – similar types of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The instructor just has to be the right kind of person, they'll be performing things they aren't even aware they're doing, effortlessly," he added.
Expense Not a Factor
The family explained to Adam the chosen tutor should preferably also have understanding of or interest in equestrian activities, skiing, artistic pursuits and music so as to influence the child in a wide range of interests.
Furthermore though, he said the family hoped the tutor to enrol the child on a variety of classes so the child would be "horseback riding and starting an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's minds, guiding their son develop into a "UK sophisticate" will bring about accomplishment and open doors.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's definitely a social class indicator," he comments.
However, despite all this tutelage in "Britishness", might the child absorb alleged cultural leaning from the international family he lives with anyway?
"Yes", answered the CEO. "They realize this could fail, but they've merely embraced the view of, 'we should try and we should start as quickly as we can', because the expense of it is not relevant," he stated.
Impractical
There are some in the education sector who share those reservations.
Another CEO, head and founder of an educational organization, who supplies personal educators, stated that "the journey of embracing two identities, or actually, discovering oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not engineered."
The expert wrote that he had emigrated from the Far East to the UK at the time of seven, and had been educated understanding and embodying both cultures. He went on to study at Cambridge University.
"The concept that a single person can serve as a living vessel of Britishness, someone who can possibly transplant the attributes of a English gentleman upon a one-year-old child, appears optimistic and unfeasible," he stated.
"From my perspective, having a distinctly UK tutor from infancy will not necessarily produce the outcome they hope for.
"I never had such a figure, and however I have been fortunate enough to enjoy several of the situations they aspire for their son."
He added: "The reality is, self-identity can not be dictated from the outside; it must be selected, and it must originate internally."
Buying Britishness
Of course, Britishness is something the expert believes can be instructed – and marketed.
"I believe the reality that the international society holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
