"Parents residing in north London is looking for an remarkable and qualified instructor to assist their smallest child on his first steps to turning into an English gentleman."
When reading this advertisement, you might easily skip the wording "initial stages" as simple an expression.
However, it may be the crucial aspect of this unique employment listing, as it attempts to recruit a tutor for a 12-month-old.
Many of applications have already been sent in since the anonymous family advertised their request for the £180,000 per year tutor, who needs to be "someone very special".
Over the last few weeks, the listing has attracted interest across the media, with numerous asking why?
Progressive Approach
A tutoring expert, chief executive of an education consultancy, which is assisting the family in their quest, stated that despite first scepticism, he viewed the plan "visionary", and "advanced".
When he consulted the family, he said they recognized the atypical nature of their request, and how early in age their son is.
But, they clarified that they "preferred not to postpone any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that age "cultural influence had already taken hold".
What precisely does the family refer to by "cultural bias"?
It's "all-encompassing", he replied. "The way you eat, the way you speak".
He explained the firstborn had absorbed "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had adopted their cultural ways. The family explained to Adam they wished to avoid this pattern to happen again with their infant.
The plan: To bring in a UK tutor, who must speak with standard English accent, to guide the baby right from the beginning.
Subtle Influence
"A great deal of the education at the start here is somewhat osmotic," explained the expert.
It's through this subtle influence that the family are hoping the child will adopt the UK customs they wish to cultivate.
Adam noted the tutor needed to be an individual who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – the same kinds of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The instructor just has to be the suitable individual, they'll be doing things they aren't even aware they're doing, just naturally," he said.
Expense Not a Factor
The family explained to Adam the selected educator should preferably also have familiarity of or passion in horse riding, winter sports, the arts and instrumental training so as to influence the child in a diverse set of hobbies.
Furthermore though, he said the family hoped the tutor to enrol the child on a range of classes so the child would be "pony-riding and starting an instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, helping their son become a "UK sophisticate" will result in success and provide access.
"Considering the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a status symbol," he comments.
However, in spite of all this instruction in "English culture", could the child adopt so-called cultural influence from the multicultural family he resides with anyway?
"Yes", replied he. "They understand this might not succeed, but they've just taken the perspective of, 'we should try and we should start as quickly as we can', because the expense of it is not relevant," he stated.
Overly Optimistic
Several in the education sector who share those concerns.
Another CEO, CEO and founder of a tutoring service, who also offer individual instructors, stated that "the process of becoming bicultural, or indeed, becoming oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not manufactured."
The expert wrote that he had emigrated from China to the Britain at the time of seven, and had been educated knowing and embodying both cultures. He went on to study at the University of Cambridge.
"The concept that an individual can function as a representation of English culture, someone who can possibly transfer the attributes of a British gentleman onto a 12-month-old child, appears idealistic and unfeasible," he wrote.
"From my perspective, engaging a quintessentially English tutor from early childhood will not necessarily produce the goal they desire.
"I never had such a tutor, and yet I have been privileged enough to live numerous of the opportunities they hope for their son."
He added: "The fact is, cultural identity should not be imposed from the outside influences; it must be embraced, and it must originate internally."
Buying Britishness
Naturally, Britishness is something Adam believes can be taught – and marketed.
"I think the situation that the global community views us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
