"Parents based in North London seeks an exceptional and experienced instructor to assist their smallest child on his first steps to becoming an British gentleman."
When reading this advertisement, you might easily miss the wording "beginning" as just figurative language.
But, it might be the crucial aspect of this distinctive employment listing, as it seeks to recruit a mentor for a 12-month-old.
Hundreds of applications have now been submitted since the anonymous family posted their request for the £180,000 per year tutor, who must be "an exceptional individual".
During the past few weeks, the listing has attracted interest in the news, with numerous wondering why?
Forward-Thinking Method
A tutoring expert, head and founder of an education consultancy, which is supporting the family in their search, said that in spite of early doubt, he found the idea "visionary", and "innovative".
When he spoke with the family, he noted they understood the atypical character of their request, and how immature their son is.
However, they explained that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had waited until their firstborn was five, and by that point "cultural conditioning had by then taken hold".
But what does the family mean by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam answered. "The way you eat, the manner you speak".
He stated the firstborn had picked up "very nuanced, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had adopted their cultural norms. The family explained to Adam they did not want the same situation to happen again with their infant.
The plan: To bring in a British tutor, who needs to speak with RP, to guide the baby from the very start.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the development at the beginning here is rather osmotic," said Adam.
It's via this natural absorption that the family are expecting the child will pick up the UK customs they wish to instil.
He explained the tutor must be an individual who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – comparable categories of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The educator just has to be the appropriate candidate, they'll be doing things they aren't even aware they're doing, simply by nature," he commented.
Money No Object
The family informed the expert the chosen tutor should ideally also have knowledge of or passion in riding, alpine skiing, artistic pursuits and instrumental training so as to influence the child in a diverse set of passions.
More than that though, he said the family wanted the tutor to register the child on a range of classes so the child would be "equestrian training and learning an instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's view, helping their son grow into a "English gentleman" will result in accomplishment and open doors.
"Considering the rights and wrongs of that, because it's definitely a class statement," he adds.
However, notwithstanding all this tutelage in "Britishness", could the child adopt so-called cultural influence from the globally influenced family he is raised by anyway?
"Yes", said he. "The parents understand this could fail, but they've simply adopted the view of, 'we should try and we'll proceed as early as we can', because the price of it is irrelevant," he stated.
Impractical
Several in the education sector who have these reservations.
Another CEO, head and founder of a tutoring service, who supplies private tutors, commented that "the development of adopting dual cultures, or actually, forming one's identity, is something that must be grown into, not engineered."
The expert wrote that he had emigrated from the Far East to the Britain at the age of 7 years old, and had been educated knowing and living dual heritages. He went on to study at Cambridge University.
"The concept that a single person can act as a representation of English culture, an individual who can in some way transfer the attributes of a UK sophisticate upon a infant child, seems to me idealistic and unrealistic," he wrote.
"In my experience, having a quintessentially UK tutor from babyhood will will not necessarily achieve the outcome they hope for.
"I wasn't provided with that kind of mentor, and nevertheless I have been lucky enough to enjoy many of the opportunities they aspire for their son."
He added: "The fact is, cultural identity can not be forced from the outside influences; it must be chosen, and it must be internally driven."
Purchasing UK Culture
Certainly, English culture is something the CEO thinks can be taught – and commercialized.
"I think the reality that the international society views us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
