"A family based in North London wants to find an exceptional and skilled tutor to support their most junior child on his first steps to turning into an English gentleman."
Upon seeing this listing, you might naturally skip the term "beginning" as mere figurative language.
Yet, it might be the most significant element of this unique position posting, as it seeks to recruit a teacher for a 12-month-old.
Many of responses have since been submitted since the unnamed family posted their search for the highly paid tutor, who needs to be "an exceptional individual".
In recent few weeks, the advert has gained interest in the press, with numerous wondering why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, head and founder of Tutors International, which is helping the family in their search, stated that notwithstanding early scepticism, he found the plan "visionary", and "innovative".
When he consulted the family, he said they recognized the atypical aspect of their demand, and how young their son is.
But, they clarified that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had waited until their older child was five, and by that stage "cultural influence had by then set in".
But what did the family refer to by "cultural leaning"?
It's "everything", Adam answered. "The manner you eat, the way you speak".
He explained the firstborn had adopted "really subtle, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had assumed their cultural norms. The family explained to him they wished to avoid this pattern to recur with their younger child.
The plan: To engage a British tutor, who must speak with standard English accent, to shape the baby from day one.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the education at the outset here is rather absorbed naturally," stated Adam.
It's via this osmosis that the family are expecting the child will acquire the British traits they aim to impart.
Adam noted the tutor needed to be an individual who attended "prestigious academies – the same kinds of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The educator just has to be the appropriate candidate, they'll be performing things they aren't even aware they're doing, just naturally," he said.
Expense Not a Factor
The family informed him the successful candidate should ideally also have understanding of or passion in riding, winter sports, the arts and music so as to influence the child in a diverse set of passions.
Furthermore though, he explained the family desired the tutor to register the child on a variety of lessons so the child would be "pony-riding and starting an instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, helping their son become a "British gentleman" will result in achievement and create opportunities.
"Considering the rights and wrongs of that, because it's undoubtedly a social class indicator," he adds.
However, despite all this instruction in "Britishness", would the child pick up so-called cultural bias from the international family he lives with regardless?
"Certainly", said Adam. "The family realize this may not work, but they've just taken the perspective of, 'we should try and let's go as quickly as we can', because the expense of it is not relevant," he explained.
Impractical
There are some in the private teaching field who express these doubts.
An education leader, chief executive of a tutoring service, who also offer personal educators, stated that "the process of adopting dual cultures, or actually, forming one's identity, is something that must be experienced personally, not manufactured."
The expert wrote that he had moved from the Far East to the Britain at the age of 7 years old, and had been educated understanding and practicing two backgrounds. He continued to study at Cambridge University.
"The concept that an individual can serve as a living vessel of Britishness, someone who can somehow transplant the qualities of a English gentleman onto a one-year-old child, strikes me as idealistic and unrealistic," he wrote.
"From my perspective, engaging a distinctly British tutor from babyhood will does not instantly produce the outcome they desire.
"I did not have such a tutor, and nevertheless I have been privileged enough to enjoy many of the opportunities they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The fact is, personal identity cannot be imposed from the external environment; it must be selected, and it must come from within."
Acquiring Englishness
Certainly, UK identity is something Adam believes can be taught – and sold.
"In my view the reality that the global community holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
