"A household residing in North London seeks an remarkable and qualified educator to guide their most junior child on his first steps to growing into an British gentleman."
When reading this listing, you might readily overlook the wording "initial stages" as simple an expression.
Yet, it may be the most important part of this unique employment listing, as it aims to hire a teacher for a 12-month-old.
Many of responses have already been submitted since the anonymous family advertised their call for the £180k-a-year tutor, who needs to be "someone very special".
Over the last few weeks, the advert has attracted notice in the media, with numerous asking why?
Innovative Idea
Adam Caller, CEO and founder of Tutors International, which is helping the family in their search, said that notwithstanding first scepticism, he found the concept "far sighted", and "advanced".
When he met the family, he said they understood the unusual character of their demand, and how early in age their son is.
But, they clarified that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to get a tutor, as they had waited until their firstborn was five, and by that age "cultural conditioning had by then taken hold".
But what does the family mean by "cultural bias"?
It's "everything", Adam answered. "The way you eat, how you speak".
He said the firstborn had adopted "really subtle, body language" from the family, and had taken on their cultural norms. The family explained to the consultant they hoped to prevent this pattern to recur with their infant.
The strategy: To hire a UK tutor, who must speak with standard English accent, to shape the baby right from the beginning.
Natural Absorption
"A lot of the learning at the start here is kind of absorbed naturally," explained the CEO.
It's via this subtle influence that the family are aiming the child will pick up the British traits they aim to instil.
The consultant said the tutor needed to be somebody who went to "prestigious academies – similar types of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The tutor must be the suitable individual, they'll be doing things they may not realize they're doing, just naturally," he commented.
Expense Not a Factor
The family informed him the selected educator should ideally also have familiarity of or interest in equestrian activities, winter sports, the arts and music so as to influence the child in a diverse set of passions.
More than that though, he explained the family desired the tutor to enrol the child on a selection of courses so the child would be "equestrian training and learning an musical instrument by the time they are approximately three years old".
In the family's minds, helping their son grow into a "English gentleman" will bring about accomplishment and create opportunities.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a social class indicator," he notes.
However, notwithstanding all this guidance in "English culture", could the child pick up so-called cultural leaning from the international family he lives with anyway?
"Absolutely", said the CEO. "The parents know this might not succeed, but they've simply adopted the view of, 'let's give it a go and we should start as quickly as we can', because the cost of it is not relevant," he said.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
A number of in the tutoring industry who have those concerns.
An education leader, CEO and founder of Blue Education, who also offer private tutors, commented that "the development of adopting dual cultures, or indeed, forming one's identity, is something that must be experienced personally, not engineered."
He wrote that he had moved from the Far East to the United Kingdom at the time of childhood, and had been educated experiencing and living dual heritages. He went on to study at Cambridge University.
"The concept that one individual can act as a representation of Britishness, someone who can in some way impart the qualities of a UK sophisticate to a 12-month-old child, appears naive and unfeasible," he stated.
"From my perspective, employing a distinctly English tutor from infancy will not necessarily create the goal they want.
"I did not have such a tutor, and yet I have been lucky enough to enjoy numerous of the opportunities they hope for their son."
He stated: "The reality is, self-identity can not be dictated from the external environment; it must be selected, and it must be internally driven."
Buying Britishness
Naturally, Britishness is something Adam believes can be educated – and commercialized.
"In my view the situation that the international society views us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
