"A family based in the northern part of London wants to find an exceptional and experienced educator to assist their youngest child on his initial journey to turning into an English gentleman."
Looking at this listing, you might easily miss the wording "initial stages" as just figurative language.
However, it might be the most significant part of this unique employment listing, as it aims to recruit a tutor for a one-year-old.
Many of responses have since been sent in since the anonymous family advertised their request for the highly paid tutor, who needs to be "a uniquely qualified person".
In recent few weeks, the post has gained notice throughout the news, with several wondering why?
Forward-Thinking Method
Adam Caller, chief executive of an education consultancy, which is helping the family in their quest, said that despite initial doubt, he considered the concept "far sighted", and "innovative".
When he spoke with the family, he mentioned they understood the unusual nature of their requirement, 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 held off until their firstborn was five, and by that stage "cultural influence had already set in".
What exactly did the family mean by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam responded. "How you eat, the way you speak".
He said the older sibling had adopted "very nuanced, unspoken signals" from the family, and had assumed their cultural ways. The family told him they did not want the same situation to repeat itself with their younger child.
The plan: To hire a English tutor, who must speak with Received Pronunciation, to influence the baby from day one.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the education at the beginning here is kind of osmotic," said the expert.
It's via this subtle influence that the family are hoping the child will adopt the English characteristics they wish to impart.
He noted the tutor must be an individual who studied at "the appropriate educational institutions – similar types of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The educator must be the suitable individual, they'll be performing things they don't even know they're doing, just naturally," he said.
Cost Not Relevant
The family informed the expert the selected educator should ideally also have understanding of or enthusiasm in riding, skiing, artistic pursuits and music so as to shape the child in a wide range of hobbies.
More than that though, he said the family desired the tutor to register the child on a variety of classes so the child would be "pony-riding and learning an musical instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, assisting their son become a "British gentleman" will lead to success and open doors.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's definitely a status symbol," he notes.
However, despite all this instruction in "English culture", might the child pick up what is termed cultural leaning from the multicultural family he is raised by regardless?
"Certainly", said the CEO. "The parents realize this could fail, but they've merely embraced the view of, 'we should try and we should start as soon as we can', because the price of it is irrelevant," he explained.
Overly Optimistic
Several in the tutoring industry who express these doubts.
An education leader, CEO and founder of a tutoring service, who supplies personal educators, stated that "the development of adopting dual cultures, or in fact, becoming oneself, is something that must be grown into, not engineered."
He wrote that he had moved from China to the Britain at the age of 7 years old, and had been raised knowing and embodying two backgrounds. He progressed to study at the University of Cambridge.
"The idea that a single person can act as a representation of English culture, an individual who can in some way transplant the characteristics of a English gentleman onto a infant child, strikes me as optimistic and unrealistic," he wrote.
"Based on my background, engaging a quintessentially British tutor from babyhood will does not automatically create the goal they desire.
"I never had such a tutor, and yet I have been lucky enough to experience many of the opportunities they aspire for their son."
He added: "The truth is, personal identity cannot be imposed from the outside; it must be selected, and it must come from within."
Acquiring Englishness
Certainly, Britishness is something the CEO believes can be instructed – and commercialized.
"I think the fact that the world regards us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
