"A family based in the northern part of London is looking for an remarkable and skilled educator to guide their most junior child on his first steps to becoming an English gentleman."
Upon seeing this advertisement, you might readily skip the phrase "beginning" as simple an expression.
However, it could be the most important element of this unusual job advert, as it seeks to find a mentor for a infant.
Hundreds of applications have now been sent in since the unnamed family advertised their search for the highly paid tutor, who must be "a uniquely qualified person".
During the past few weeks, the advert has gained interest across the media, with numerous asking why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is assisting the family in their search, stated that despite first scepticism, he considered the idea "visionary", and "innovative".
When he spoke with the family, he said they recognized the unusual nature of their request, and how early in age their son is.
Nevertheless, they stated that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their firstborn was five, and by that age "cultural conditioning had already taken hold".
What precisely did the family indicate by "cultural bias"?
It's "everything", the expert replied. "The manner you eat, how you speak".
He stated the elder child had absorbed "really subtle, body language" from the family, and had adopted their cultural norms. The family informed Adam they wished to avoid history to recur with their younger child.
The strategy: To engage a British tutor, who needs to speak with RP, to guide the baby right from the beginning.
Osmotic Learning
"Much of the education at the outset here is somewhat absorbed naturally," said the expert.
It's by means of this osmosis that the family are expecting the child will acquire the UK customs they aim to impart.
He explained the tutor had to be an individual who attended "the appropriate educational institutions – similar types of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The educator must be the appropriate candidate, they'll be carrying out things they don't even know they're doing, simply by nature," he added.
Money No Object
The family informed him the chosen tutor should ideally also have knowledge of or passion in riding, alpine skiing, artistic pursuits and music so as to shape the child in a diverse set of interests.
More than that though, he stated the family desired the tutor to enrol the child on a range of classes so the child would be "equestrian training and learning an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's view, helping their son become a "British gentleman" will lead to success and provide access.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a social class indicator," he notes.
But, despite all this guidance in "English culture", might the child pick up what is termed cultural bias from the international family he resides with anyway?
"Certainly", answered he. "They realize this may not work, but they've merely embraced the perspective of, 'why not attempt it and we should start as soon as we can', because the price of it is irrelevant," he explained.
Impractical
Several in the tutoring industry who express these doubts.
Peter Cui, head and founder of Blue Education, who provides individual instructors, commented that "the journey of becoming bicultural, or indeed, discovering oneself, is something that must be lived into, not manufactured."
Peter explained that he had emigrated from Asia to the UK at the age of childhood, and had been educated experiencing and living two backgrounds. He went on to be educated at Cambridge University.
"The idea that a single person can serve as a embodiment of UK identity, someone who can possibly transfer the characteristics of a British gentleman upon a one-year-old child, seems to me naive and impractical," he commented.
"Based on my background, engaging a typically UK tutor from infancy will does not necessarily achieve the outcome they hope for.
"I wasn't provided with such a tutor, and yet I have been privileged enough to live many of the situations they desire for their son."
He stated: "The truth is, self-identity cannot be dictated from the outside; it must be chosen, and it must originate internally."
Acquiring Englishness
Of course, English culture is something Adam thinks can be taught – and marketed.
"I think the fact that the global community views us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
