"A family residing in north London is looking for an extraordinary and qualified tutor to support their smallest child on his first steps to turning into an British gentleman."
When reading this listing, you might readily miss the phrase "initial stages" as mere a turn of phrase.
Yet, it could be the crucial aspect of this unique employment listing, as it seeks to find a mentor for a one-year-old.
Many of submissions have since been sent in since the unidentified family advertised their search for the highly paid tutor, who has to be "someone very special".
In recent few weeks, the listing has gained attention in the press, with several wondering why?
Progressive Approach
A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is helping the family in their search, stated that in spite of first scepticism, he viewed the plan "far sighted", and "innovative".
When he consulted the family, he said they recognized the unusual character of their request, and how immature their son is.
Nevertheless, they explained that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their firstborn was five, and by that stage "cultural bias had by then become established".
But what did the family mean by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "comprehensive", Adam responded. "How you eat, how you speak".
He said the firstborn had picked up "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had adopted their cultural habits. The family explained to him they did not want history to recur with their younger child.
The intention: To bring in a UK tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to guide the baby from the very start.
Subtle Influence
"Much of the development at the start here is rather acquired indirectly," explained the CEO.
It's via this subtle influence that the family are hoping the child will adopt the British traits they aim to instil.
He noted the tutor must be somebody who attended "prestigious academies – similar types of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The tutor must be the suitable individual, they'll be performing things they don't even know they're doing, simply by nature," he added.
Expense Not a Factor
The family informed him the successful candidate should ideally also have knowledge of or interest in horse riding, skiing, the arts and musical activities so as to inspire the child in a wide range of passions.
Furthermore though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a range of courses so the child would be "horseback riding and picking up an instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, assisting their son become a "British gentleman" will lead to accomplishment and open doors.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a status symbol," he notes.
Yet, despite all this guidance in "UK identity", might the child absorb so-called cultural influence from the globally influenced family he lives with anyway?
"Certainly", said the CEO. "The family know this could fail, but they've simply adopted the view of, 'let's give it a go and we should start as soon as we can', because the expense of it is irrelevant," he explained.
Impractical
A number of in the private teaching field who express those doubts.
Peter Cui, head and founder of an educational organization, who provides individual instructors, commented that "the development of adopting dual cultures, or actually, discovering oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not manufactured."
Peter wrote that he had emigrated from the Far East to the Britain at the time of seven, and had been brought up experiencing and living dual heritages. He continued to learn at a prestigious UK institution.
"The notion that a single person can serve as a embodiment of English culture, someone who can in some way transplant the characteristics of a English gentleman upon a one-year-old child, strikes me as naive and impractical," he wrote.
"From my perspective, engaging a quintessentially English tutor from early childhood will will not automatically achieve the result they hope for.
"I never had such a figure, and however I have been privileged enough to live many of the situations they hope for their son."
He stated: "The truth is, cultural identity can not be forced from the external environment; it must be selected, and it must come from within."
Buying Britishness
Certainly, English culture is something Adam believes can be instructed – and commercialized.
"I think the reality that the international society holds us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
