"Parents based in north London is looking for an extraordinary and experienced instructor to support their smallest child on his first steps to growing into an British gentleman."
Looking at this listing, you might naturally overlook the phrase "first-steps" as just an expression.
However, it may be the crucial part of this distinctive position posting, as it aims to recruit a tutor for a 12-month-old.
Numerous of submissions have since been sent in since the anonymous family advertised their call for the highly paid tutor, who needs to be "a uniquely qualified person".
In recent few weeks, the post has received interest throughout the press, with several wondering why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of an education consultancy, which is assisting the family in their hunt, said that notwithstanding early skepticism, he considered the plan "far sighted", and "innovative".
When he met the family, he noted they appreciated the atypical character of their demand, and how young their son is.
However, they explained that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had postponed until their firstborn was five, and by that point "cultural conditioning had already set in".
But what does the family mean by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam replied. "The manner you eat, how you speak".
He explained the elder child had picked up "extremely delicate, unspoken signals" from the family, and had taken on their cultural ways. The family informed the consultant they wished to avoid this pattern to recur with their younger child.
The plan: To hire a UK tutor, who should speak with RP, to guide the baby from day one.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the education at the outset here is rather acquired indirectly," stated the CEO.
It's by means of this natural absorption that the family are aiming the child will acquire the British traits they want to cultivate.
The consultant noted the tutor had to be someone who went to "the right kinds of schools – comparable categories of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The educator must be the appropriate candidate, they'll be doing things they aren't even aware they're doing, effortlessly," he said.
Money No Object
The family informed the expert the chosen tutor should preferably also have understanding of or enthusiasm in horse riding, winter sports, creative fields and music so as to influence the child in a wide range of passions.
More than that 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 approximately three years old".
In the family's view, helping their son develop into a "British gentleman" will lead to achievement and create opportunities.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a social class indicator," he notes.
However, despite all this instruction in "Britishness", could the child pick up so-called cultural bias from the international family he is raised by regardless?
"Certainly", said the CEO. "The parents understand this might not succeed, but they've merely embraced the view of, 'we should try and let's go as soon as we can', because the expense of it is irrelevant," he explained.
Overly Optimistic
A number of in the tutoring industry who express these concerns.
Another CEO, chief executive of a tutoring service, who provides personal educators, stated that "the development of embracing two identities, or indeed, becoming oneself, is something that must be grown into, not engineered."
The expert noted that he had moved from the Far East to the UK at the age of childhood, and had been educated knowing and practicing both cultures. He went on to learn at Cambridge University.
"The idea that one individual can serve as a embodiment of UK identity, someone who can somehow transplant the attributes of a English gentleman onto a 12-month-old child, strikes me as naive and unrealistic," he wrote.
"From my perspective, having a typically UK tutor from infancy will does not automatically create the goal they want.
"I wasn't provided with that kind of mentor, and however I have been fortunate enough to enjoy several of the opportunities they hope for their son."
He continued: "The truth is, personal identity cannot be dictated from the external environment; it must be embraced, and it must be internally driven."
Purchasing UK Culture
Of course, English culture is something the expert hopes can be taught – and marketed.
"I believe the situation that the international society views us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
