"Parents located in north London is looking for an exceptional and experienced educator to support their youngest child on his early path to turning into an British gentleman."
When reading this listing, you might readily overlook the phrase "initial stages" as mere figurative language.
However, it may be the most important aspect of this distinctive employment listing, as it attempts to hire a teacher for a one-year-old.
Hundreds of applications have already been received since the anonymous family published their call for the £180,000 per year tutor, who has to be "someone very special".
During the past few weeks, the post has attracted attention in the press, with several wondering why?
Forward-Thinking Method
Adam Caller, CEO and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is helping the family in their search, said that notwithstanding early doubt, he found the plan "visionary", and "progressive".
When he met the family, he noted they recognized the atypical nature of their demand, and how immature their son is.
But, they explained that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their elder sibling was five, and by that point "cultural bias had already set in".
What exactly did the family mean by "cultural leaning"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam responded. "How you eat, the manner you speak".
He explained the older sibling had picked up "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had assumed their cultural habits. The family informed Adam they wished to avoid this pattern to repeat itself with their younger child.
The intention: To bring in a English tutor, who must speak with RP, to shape the baby from the very start.
Osmotic Learning
"A lot of the development at the outset here is rather acquired indirectly," stated the expert.
It's by means of this subtle influence that the family are expecting the child will pick up the English characteristics they aim to instil.
Adam explained the tutor had to be someone who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – comparable categories of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The instructor just has to be the right kind of person, they'll be carrying out things they may not realize they're doing, simply by nature," he commented.
Money No Object
The family explained to him the chosen tutor should ideally also have familiarity of or enthusiasm in riding, winter sports, creative fields and musical activities so as to inspire the child in a diverse set of passions.
More than that though, he said the family wanted the tutor to enrol the child on a range of classes so the child would be "pony-riding and starting an tool by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, helping their son develop into a "English gentleman" will bring about achievement and open doors.
"Considering the pros and cons of that, because it's certainly a status symbol," he adds.
But, in spite of all this instruction in "UK identity", could the child absorb what is termed cultural influence from the international family he is raised by regardless?
"Absolutely", said he. "The parents realize this could fail, but they've just taken the attitude of, 'why not attempt it and we should start as quickly as we can', because the price of it is not relevant," he explained.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
A number of in the private teaching field who express those reservations.
Peter Cui, chief executive of a tutoring service, who provides individual instructors, wrote that "the journey of becoming bicultural, or in fact, becoming oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not designed."
He wrote that he had emigrated from Asia to the United Kingdom at the age of childhood, and had been raised understanding and practicing two backgrounds. He progressed to be educated at Cambridge University.
"The notion that one individual can function as a living vessel of Britishness, an individual who can in some way impart the qualities of a UK sophisticate onto a 12-month-old child, seems to me idealistic and unrealistic," he commented.
"In my experience, employing a quintessentially English tutor from babyhood will not necessarily achieve the goal they desire.
"I did not have such a tutor, and yet I have been lucky enough to enjoy several of the experiences they aspire for their son."
He continued: "The fact is, cultural identity cannot be forced from the outside influences; it must be selected, and it must be internally driven."
Buying Britishness
Certainly, English culture is something the CEO thinks can be taught – and sold.
"In my view the situation that the international society views us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
