"Parents residing in north London seeks an exceptional and experienced tutor to support their youngest child on his first steps to becoming an British gentleman."
When reading this post, you might easily miss the wording "first-steps" as mere a turn of phrase.
Yet, it might be the most significant element of this distinctive job advert, as it aims to hire a mentor for a one-year-old.
Many of applications have already been sent in since the unidentified family posted their request for the highly paid tutor, who must be "an exceptional individual".
During the past few weeks, the listing has gained notice throughout the news, with numerous questioning why?
Progressive Approach
A tutoring expert, head and founder of Tutors International, which is assisting the family in their hunt, stated that notwithstanding first skepticism, he viewed the plan "forward-looking", and "progressive".
When he spoke with the family, he said they appreciated the atypical character of their requirement, and how young their son is.
However, they clarified that they "preferred not to postpone any longer" to get a tutor, as they had postponed until their elder sibling was five, and by that age "cultural bias had already become established".
What precisely did the family indicate by "cultural leaning"?
It's "all-encompassing", the expert answered. "How you eat, the way you speak".
He stated the older sibling had picked up "very nuanced, body language" from the family, and had taken on their cultural habits. The family informed Adam they did not want the same situation to happen again with their younger child.
The strategy: To hire a English tutor, who must speak with Received Pronunciation, to guide the baby from the very start.
Osmotic Learning
"Much of the education at the beginning here is rather acquired indirectly," stated Adam.
It's by means of this subtle influence that the family are expecting the child will adopt the English characteristics they aim to impart.
Adam noted the tutor must be an individual who studied at "prestigious academies – comparable categories of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The tutor simply needs to be the right kind of person, they'll be performing things they aren't even aware they're doing, simply by nature," he said.
Cost Not Relevant
The family told him the chosen tutor should preferably also have understanding of or interest in riding, alpine skiing, artistic pursuits and musical activities so as to shape the child in a wide range of interests.
More than that though, he explained the family wanted the tutor to register the child on a range of classes so the child would be "pony-riding and picking up an instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's view, helping their son become a "English gentleman" will lead to achievement and provide access.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a status symbol," he adds.
But, in spite of all this guidance in "English culture", might the child pick up so-called cultural leaning from the globally influenced family he resides with anyway?
"Certainly", replied Adam. "The family understand this may not work, but they've just taken the attitude of, 'why not attempt it and we should start as soon as we can', because the cost of it is irrelevant," he stated.
Impractical
Several in the education sector who express similar doubts.
Another CEO, CEO and founder of an educational organization, who also offer personal educators, stated that "the process of becoming bicultural, or in fact, discovering oneself, is something that must be lived into, not engineered."
The expert wrote that he had relocated from the Far East to the UK at the period of childhood, and had been educated experiencing and living both cultures. He went on to study at the University of Cambridge.
"The idea that an individual can act as a embodiment of UK identity, a person who can possibly transplant the qualities of a UK sophisticate upon a infant child, strikes me as optimistic and unfeasible," he wrote.
"From my perspective, having a quintessentially UK tutor from infancy will will not automatically achieve the goal they hope for.
"I did not have that kind of mentor, and however I have been lucky enough to live many of the opportunities they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The fact is, personal identity can not be dictated from the outside; it must be embraced, and it must originate internally."
Buying Britishness
Naturally, English culture is something the CEO thinks can be taught – and commercialized.
"I think the reality that the world holds us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
