"A family located in north London seeks an remarkable and experienced educator to support their smallest child on his early path to becoming an English gentleman."
Looking at this listing, you might easily skip the wording "initial stages" as mere figurative language.
However, it may be the most important element of this unique position posting, as it attempts to hire a tutor for a infant.
Numerous of applications have now been received since the anonymous family posted their call for the £180k-a-year tutor, who needs to be "someone very special".
Over the last few weeks, the post has gained attention across the press, with several wondering why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, head and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is assisting the family in their search, stated that despite initial scepticism, he viewed the concept "far sighted", and "innovative".
When he met the family, he mentioned they recognized the unusual character of their requirement, and how immature their son is.
Nevertheless, they clarified that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had waited until their elder sibling was five, and by that stage "cultural conditioning had by then become established".
But what did the family indicate by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "everything", Adam answered. "The way you eat, the way you speak".
He stated the elder child had adopted "very nuanced, body language" from the family, and had assumed their cultural habits. The family explained to Adam they wished to avoid the same situation to recur with their new baby.
The strategy: To bring in a British tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to influence the baby right from the beginning.
Subtle Influence
"Much of the education at the outset here is rather absorbed naturally," said the CEO.
It's by means of this osmosis that the family are hoping the child will acquire the UK customs they want to impart.
Adam noted the tutor needed to be someone who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – similar types of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The educator simply needs to be the suitable individual, they'll be carrying out things they aren't even aware they're doing, just naturally," he commented.
Money No Object
The family informed the expert the selected educator should ideally also have understanding of or passion in riding, alpine skiing, artistic pursuits and musical activities so as to inspire the child in a broad spectrum of hobbies.
More than that though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to register the child on a range of classes so the child would be "pony-riding and learning an tool by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's perspective, helping their son grow into a "UK sophisticate" will bring about accomplishment and create opportunities.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's definitely a class statement," he comments.
However, notwithstanding all this tutelage in "English culture", might the child absorb so-called cultural influence from the international family he resides with anyway?
"Certainly", said he. "They realize this could fail, but they've merely embraced the view of, 'let's give it a go and we'll proceed as soon as we can', because the cost of it is not relevant," he said.
Impractical
A number of in the tutoring industry who express these doubts.
Peter Cui, head and founder of Blue Education, who provides individual instructors, wrote that "the process of becoming bicultural, or in fact, becoming oneself, is something that must be lived into, not designed."
He noted that he had relocated from the Far East to the United Kingdom at the time of 7 years old, and had been raised knowing and living two backgrounds. He continued to learn at the University of Cambridge.
"The idea that one individual can serve as a embodiment of English culture, someone who can in some way transfer the attributes of a English gentleman to a infant child, seems to me naive and unrealistic," he commented.
"In my experience, engaging a typically English tutor from infancy will does not automatically create the outcome they desire.
"I never had that kind of mentor, and however I have been fortunate enough to live numerous of the situations they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The truth is, cultural identity can not be dictated from the external environment; it must be embraced, and it must be internally driven."
Acquiring Englishness
Of course, UK identity is something the expert thinks can be taught – and marketed.
"In my view the situation that the global community holds us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
