"A household based in North London wants to find an exceptional and skilled instructor to support their smallest child on his early path to growing into an English gentleman."
When reading this advertisement, you might easily skip the term "initial stages" as mere an expression.
However, it could be the most significant aspect of this unusual job advert, as it attempts to find a tutor for a infant.
Many of responses have already been sent in since the anonymous family advertised their request for the £180k-a-year tutor, who needs to be "someone very special".
Over the last few weeks, the post has received interest throughout the media, with numerous questioning why?
Forward-Thinking Method
Adam Caller, CEO and founder of an education consultancy, which is supporting the family in their hunt, stated that despite early scepticism, he viewed the concept "visionary", and "innovative".
When he consulted the family, he noted they appreciated the unusual character of their request, and how immature their son is.
Nevertheless, they stated that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had waited until their older child was five, and by that age "cultural influence had already taken hold".
What exactly does the family refer to by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "all-encompassing", he answered. "How you eat, how you speak".
He said the older sibling had absorbed "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had adopted their cultural norms. The family told him they hoped to prevent this pattern to recur with their younger child.
The plan: To hire a UK tutor, who should speak with standard English accent, to guide the baby from the very start.
Subtle Influence
"A great deal of the development at the outset here is kind of osmotic," explained Adam.
It's via this osmosis that the family are expecting the child will adopt the UK customs they aim to cultivate.
The consultant said the tutor needed to be someone who went to "prestigious academies – comparable categories of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The instructor simply needs to be the right kind of person, they'll be carrying out things they may not realize they're doing, just naturally," he commented.
Money No Object
The family explained to him the selected educator should ideally also have knowledge of or enthusiasm in riding, winter sports, creative fields and music so as to shape the child in a diverse set of interests.
Additionally though, he explained the family wanted the tutor to sign up the child on a selection of lessons so the child would be "pony-riding and picking up an instrument by the time they are approximately three years old".
In the family's minds, guiding their son become a "British gentleman" will result in success and open doors.
"Considering the pros and cons of that, because it's certainly a social class indicator," he notes.
Yet, despite all this tutelage in "English culture", would the child pick up what is termed cultural influence from the international family he resides with anyway?
"Yes", replied Adam. "They realize this might not succeed, but they've simply adopted the view of, 'why not attempt it and let's go as soon as we can', because the price of it is not a concern," he explained.
Impractical
A number of in the private teaching field who have these reservations.
An education leader, head and founder of a tutoring service, who supplies private tutors, wrote that "the development of becoming bicultural, or in fact, becoming oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not engineered."
Peter explained that he had emigrated from Asia to the Britain at the time of seven, and had been educated understanding and embodying two backgrounds. He progressed to be educated at a prestigious UK institution.
"The notion that a single person can function as a living vessel of English culture, an individual who can in some way transplant the qualities of a UK sophisticate to a 12-month-old child, seems to me naive and impractical," he wrote.
"From my perspective, engaging a typically British tutor from infancy will not instantly achieve the result they hope for.
"I did not have such a tutor, and yet I have been privileged enough to live numerous of the situations they desire for their son."
He added: "The fact is, self-identity cannot be dictated from the outside influences; it must be chosen, and it must be internally driven."
Acquiring Englishness
Of course, English culture is something the expert believes can be educated – and sold.
"In my view the reality that the international society views us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
