"Parents residing in the northern part of London wants to find an exceptional and qualified educator to guide their most junior child on his first steps to growing into an British gentleman."
When reading this post, you might naturally skip the term "beginning" as mere an expression.
However, it could be the most significant part of this unique employment listing, as it aims to recruit a tutor for a one-year-old.
Hundreds of applications have now been received since the anonymous family advertised their request for the £180k-a-year tutor, who has to be "an exceptional individual".
In recent few weeks, the advert has received attention throughout the news, with numerous asking why?
Progressive Approach
Adam Caller, head and founder of an education consultancy, which is assisting the family in their search, stated that despite initial doubt, he found the plan "forward-looking", and "innovative".
When he consulted the family, he mentioned they understood the atypical nature of their requirement, and how immature their son is.
But, they stated that they "preferred not to postpone any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that stage "cultural influence had already set in".
But what did the family indicate by "cultural bias"?
It's "all-encompassing", the expert responded. "How you eat, the manner you speak".
He said the older sibling had absorbed "very nuanced, body language" from the family, and had assumed their cultural ways. The family told the consultant they did not want history to repeat itself with their infant.
The strategy: To bring in a English tutor, who needs to speak with Received Pronunciation, to influence the baby from the very start.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the development at the outset here is rather acquired indirectly," said Adam.
It's via this osmosis that the family are expecting the child will adopt the English characteristics they aim to impart.
The consultant noted the tutor must be someone who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – comparable categories of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The instructor just has to be the appropriate candidate, they'll be doing things they aren't even aware they're doing, just naturally," he added.
Cost Not Relevant
The family told him the successful candidate should ideally also have understanding of or interest in horse riding, winter sports, the arts and musical activities so as to inspire the child in a broad spectrum of interests.
More than that though, he explained the family desired the tutor to sign up the child on a selection of courses so the child would be "pony-riding and learning an instrument by the time they are approximately three years old".
In the family's minds, assisting their son grow into a "British gentleman" will bring about accomplishment and open doors.
"For all the pros and cons of that, because it's certainly a social class indicator," he comments.
But, notwithstanding all this instruction in "UK identity", might the child pick up so-called cultural influence from the international family he resides with anyway?
"Yes", answered Adam. "They understand this might not succeed, but they've simply adopted the attitude of, 'we should try and let's go as early as we can', because the cost of it is not relevant," he said.
Impractical
A number of in the education sector who express those concerns.
An education leader, chief executive of Blue Education, who provides individual instructors, wrote that "the development of becoming bicultural, or indeed, discovering oneself, is something that must be grown into, not manufactured."
He noted that he had emigrated from the Far East to the UK at the period of childhood, and had been raised knowing and living dual heritages. He went on to learn at a prestigious UK institution.
"The concept that an individual can act as a representation of Britishness, a person who can in some way impart the attributes of a British gentleman onto a 12-month-old child, strikes me as naive and unfeasible," he stated.
"Based on my background, engaging a quintessentially English tutor from infancy will will not automatically create the result they desire.
"I did not have that kind of mentor, and yet I have been privileged enough to experience several of the opportunities they hope for their son."
He added: "The fact is, cultural identity can not be imposed from the outside influences; it must be chosen, and it must come from within."
Buying Britishness
Of course, UK identity is something the CEO believes can be instructed – and commercialized.
"In my view the reality that the global community holds us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
