"Parents based in North London seeks an extraordinary and skilled tutor to support their most junior child on his first steps to growing into an British gentleman."
When reading this post, you might naturally overlook the term "first-steps" as just figurative language.
However, it could be the most significant aspect of this unusual job advert, as it aims to find a mentor for a one-year-old.
Hundreds of submissions have since been sent in since the unnamed family advertised their call for the £180,000 per year tutor, who has to be "someone very special".
Over the last few weeks, the post has attracted interest in the press, with several wondering why?
Progressive Approach
The CEO, CEO and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is helping the family in their quest, explained that in spite of initial doubt, he considered the plan "visionary", and "progressive".
When he consulted the family, he said they appreciated the unconventional aspect of their requirement, and how young their son is.
However, they stated that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had waited until their older child was five, and by that age "cultural conditioning had by then set in".
What precisely did the family mean by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "all-encompassing", he responded. "The way you eat, the way you speak".
He stated the elder child had absorbed "extremely delicate, unspoken signals" from the family, and had adopted their cultural habits. The family explained to the consultant they hoped to prevent the same situation to recur with their new baby.
The strategy: To hire a UK tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to influence the baby from the very start.
Osmotic Learning
"Much of the education at the outset here is kind of acquired indirectly," stated the CEO.
It's by means of this subtle influence that the family are expecting the child will acquire the British traits they wish to instil.
He noted the tutor had to be somebody who studied at "the right kinds of schools – comparable categories of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The tutor must be the suitable individual, they'll be carrying out things they don't even know they're doing, just naturally," he said.
Money No Object
The family informed him the successful candidate should ideally also have knowledge of or passion in riding, winter sports, the arts and music so as to influence the child in a broad spectrum of hobbies.
Furthermore though, he stated the family hoped the tutor to register the child on a variety of courses so the child would be "pony-riding and picking up an musical instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's perspective, assisting their son grow into a "UK sophisticate" will result in accomplishment and create opportunities.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's undoubtedly a class statement," he adds.
Yet, despite all this instruction in "Britishness", would the child pick up what is termed cultural bias from the globally influenced family he is raised by regardless?
"Absolutely", answered he. "They know this may not work, but they've merely embraced the perspective of, 'why not attempt it and we'll proceed as quickly as we can', because the cost of it is not relevant," he said.
Overly Optimistic
A number of in the tutoring industry who have these concerns.
An education leader, head and founder of an educational organization, who supplies personal educators, wrote that "the process of embracing two identities, or actually, discovering oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not designed."
He explained that he had moved from the Far East to the United Kingdom at the age of childhood, and had been brought up experiencing and practicing both cultures. He continued to learn at a prestigious UK institution.
"The concept that a single person can function as a representation of Britishness, a person who can somehow impart the characteristics of a British gentleman upon a infant child, seems to me naive and unfeasible," he stated.
"From my perspective, employing a typically UK tutor from infancy will does not necessarily achieve the outcome they desire.
"I wasn't provided with such a figure, and nevertheless I have been fortunate enough to live numerous of the experiences they desire for their son."
He added: "The reality is, self-identity cannot be forced from the external environment; it must be chosen, and it must be internally driven."
Buying Britishness
Certainly, English culture is something the expert believes can be educated – and commercialized.
"I believe the reality that the world regards us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
