"Parents located in North London seeks an extraordinary and skilled tutor to guide their most junior child on his early path to growing into an English gentleman."
Upon seeing this advertisement, you might naturally skip the term "beginning" as just an expression.
However, it might be the most significant part of this distinctive 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 search for the £180k-a-year tutor, who has to be "an exceptional individual".
In recent few weeks, the listing has received interest across the press, with several questioning why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, chief executive of a global tutoring firm, which is assisting the family in their quest, stated that in spite of early doubt, he considered the concept "visionary", and "innovative".
When he spoke with the family, he mentioned they understood the unusual aspect of their request, and how early in age their son is.
However, they stated that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to get a tutor, as they had held off until their firstborn was five, and by that point "cultural influence had by then taken hold".
But what did the family mean by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "everything", the expert responded. "The way you eat, how you speak".
He stated the older sibling had picked up "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had assumed their cultural ways. The family told the consultant they wished to avoid history to recur with their new baby.
The plan: To engage a British tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to guide the baby from the very start.
Subtle Influence
"Much of the learning at the beginning here is kind of absorbed naturally," said the CEO.
It's through this osmosis that the family are aiming the child will pick up the English characteristics they want to instil.
Adam noted the tutor must be an individual who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – the same kinds of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The tutor simply needs to be the right kind of person, they'll be performing things they aren't even aware they're doing, just naturally," he added.
Expense Not a Factor
The family told the expert the selected educator should preferably also have knowledge of or passion in riding, alpine skiing, creative fields and music so as to shape the child in a broad spectrum of hobbies.
More than that though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to register the child on a range of courses so the child would be "pony-riding and starting an instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's view, assisting their son become a "English gentleman" will lead to achievement and create opportunities.
"Considering the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's undoubtedly a class statement," he comments.
Yet, despite all this tutelage in "Britishness", might the child pick up so-called cultural influence from the multicultural family he lives with in any case?
"Certainly", answered he. "The parents know this might not succeed, but they've simply adopted the view of, 'let's give it a go and we'll proceed as quickly as we can', because the price of it is irrelevant," he explained.
Impractical
There are some in the tutoring industry who share these doubts.
An education leader, CEO and founder of an educational organization, who provides private tutors, wrote that "the process of embracing two identities, or indeed, forming one's identity, is something that must be lived into, not engineered."
He explained that he had relocated from Asia to the United Kingdom at the age of 7 years old, and had been educated knowing and practicing both cultures. He progressed to study at the University of Cambridge.
"The concept that an individual can function as a living vessel of English culture, someone who can possibly transplant the characteristics of a English gentleman upon a 12-month-old child, strikes me as naive and unrealistic," he stated.
"In my experience, employing a typically UK tutor from early childhood will not automatically achieve the outcome they hope for.
"I did not have such a figure, and yet I have been privileged enough to enjoy several of the opportunities they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The truth is, personal identity should not be dictated from the external environment; it must be chosen, and it must come from within."
Acquiring Englishness
Naturally, Britishness is something Adam hopes can be instructed – and sold.
"In my view the situation that the world views us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
