"A family located in the northern part of London is looking for an extraordinary and experienced instructor to support their smallest child on his first steps to becoming an English gentleman."
When reading this post, you might easily skip the term "initial stages" as just figurative language.
Yet, it could be the crucial element of this distinctive employment listing, as it aims to hire a tutor for a 12-month-old.
Many of submissions have already been received since the anonymous family published their request for the £180,000 per year tutor, who has to be "someone very special".
In recent few weeks, the post has attracted attention in the news, with several asking why?
Forward-Thinking Method
A tutoring expert, head and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is assisting the family in their search, explained that in spite of initial skepticism, he viewed the plan "visionary", and "progressive".
When he consulted the family, he mentioned they appreciated the atypical character of their requirement, and how early in age their son is.
But, they explained that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to get a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that age "cultural influence had already become established".
What precisely does the family indicate by "cultural leaning"?
It's "everything", the expert replied. "How you eat, the way you speak".
He said the elder child had picked up "very nuanced, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had assumed their cultural habits. The family explained to him they hoped to prevent this pattern to happen again with their infant.
The intention: To hire a English tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to guide the baby from the very start.
Natural Absorption
"A great deal of the learning at the start here is somewhat acquired indirectly," stated the CEO.
It's via this subtle influence that the family are expecting the child will adopt the British traits they aim to instil.
He noted the tutor needed to be someone who attended "the right kinds of schools – comparable categories of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The educator just has to be the suitable individual, they'll be performing things they may not realize they're doing, just naturally," he said.
Expense Not a Factor
The family informed him the chosen tutor should ideally also have familiarity of or passion in horse riding, winter sports, artistic pursuits and musical activities so as to inspire the child in a broad spectrum of passions.
Additionally though, he stated the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a selection of classes so the child would be "equestrian training and starting an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's perspective, guiding their son develop into a "British gentleman" will lead to achievement and provide access.
"Considering the rights and wrongs of that, because it's undoubtedly a status symbol," he comments.
But, notwithstanding all this instruction in "Britishness", would the child absorb what is termed cultural leaning from the international family he resides with regardless?
"Absolutely", answered the CEO. "The family understand this may not work, but they've simply adopted the view of, 'we should try and let's go as quickly as we can', because the price of it is not a concern," he said.
Impractical
Several in the tutoring industry who share these concerns.
An education leader, CEO and founder of Blue Education, who provides personal educators, wrote that "the development of becoming bicultural, or in fact, forming one's identity, is something that must be lived into, not engineered."
He explained that he had emigrated from Asia to the UK at the time of 7 years old, and had been raised knowing and embodying both cultures. He went on to study at a prestigious UK institution.
"The idea that a single person can act as a embodiment of UK identity, a person who can in some way impart the attributes of a English gentleman onto a one-year-old child, strikes me as naive and unfeasible," he wrote.
"Based on my background, employing a quintessentially UK tutor from early childhood will will not automatically create the outcome they desire.
"I never had such a tutor, and nevertheless I have been lucky enough to live several of the situations they desire for their son."
He continued: "The truth is, self-identity cannot be forced from the outside; it must be embraced, and it must come from within."
Purchasing UK Culture
Naturally, English culture is something the expert believes can be educated – and commercialized.
"In my view the situation that the world holds us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
