"A household based in North London wants to find an exceptional and qualified instructor to guide their smallest child on his early path to growing into an English gentleman."
Upon seeing this advertisement, you might naturally skip the term "initial stages" as mere figurative language.
Yet, it might be the most significant part of this unusual employment listing, as it aims to recruit a tutor for a one-year-old.
Many of applications have since been submitted since the unnamed family advertised their call for the £180,000 per year tutor, who has to be "an exceptional individual".
During the past few weeks, the listing has attracted interest throughout the media, with numerous asking why?
Progressive Approach
A tutoring expert, chief executive of an education consultancy, which is assisting the family in their hunt, stated that despite initial skepticism, he considered the concept "visionary", and "advanced".
When he met the family, he said they understood the atypical nature of their requirement, and how early in age their son is.
However, they stated that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had postponed until their elder sibling was five, and by that stage "cultural conditioning had already become established".
But what did the family indicate by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "everything", Adam replied. "The way you eat, the manner you speak".
He stated the firstborn had absorbed "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had assumed their cultural norms. The family informed him they wished to avoid this pattern to repeat itself with their younger child.
The intention: To hire a British tutor, who needs to speak with RP, to shape the baby from the very start.
Natural Absorption
"A great deal of the learning at the outset here is kind of absorbed naturally," said the CEO.
It's through this osmosis that the family are aiming the child will acquire the UK customs they aim to impart.
Adam noted the tutor had to be an individual who studied at "prestigious academies – similar types of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The educator simply needs to be the appropriate candidate, they'll be performing things they don't even know they're doing, effortlessly," he added.
Cost Not Relevant
The family informed Adam the chosen tutor should ideally also have understanding of or passion in horse riding, winter sports, artistic pursuits and musical activities so as to shape the child in a wide range of interests.
More than that though, he said the family desired the tutor to enrol the child on a range of courses so the child would be "pony-riding and learning an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's view, helping their son become a "UK sophisticate" will result in achievement and open doors.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a class statement," he adds.
However, notwithstanding all this guidance in "Britishness", could the child pick up so-called cultural influence from the globally influenced family he is raised by in any case?
"Absolutely", replied he. "The parents understand this might not succeed, but they've merely embraced the view of, 'why not attempt it and let's go as quickly as we can', because the price of it is irrelevant," he explained.
Impractical
Several in the tutoring industry who have these doubts.
Another CEO, head and founder of a tutoring service, who provides individual instructors, wrote that "the process of adopting dual cultures, or in fact, forming one's identity, is something that must be lived into, not engineered."
Peter wrote that he had emigrated from China to the UK at the age of seven, and had been brought up experiencing and practicing dual heritages. He progressed to learn at the University of Cambridge.
"The concept that an individual can serve as a living vessel of UK identity, someone who can possibly transfer the attributes of a British gentleman onto a infant child, strikes me as optimistic and unrealistic," he wrote.
"In my experience, having a typically UK tutor from infancy will will not automatically create the result they want.
"I wasn't provided with that kind of mentor, and yet I have been lucky enough to experience several of the experiences they hope for their son."
He continued: "The reality is, cultural identity can not be imposed from the outside influences; it must be selected, and it must come from within."
Acquiring Englishness
Certainly, UK identity is something the CEO hopes can be taught – and sold.
"In my view the situation that the international society views us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
