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"A family based in north London seeks an extraordinary and skilled tutor to support their most junior child on his early path to growing into an English gentleman."

Upon seeing this listing, you might readily overlook the term "initial stages" as just an expression.

Yet, it might be the most significant aspect of this unusual employment listing, as it seeks to recruit a mentor for a infant.

Hundreds of submissions have already been received since the unnamed family posted their call for the highly paid tutor, who needs to be "someone very special".

In recent few weeks, the listing has received interest throughout the media, with numerous asking why?

Innovative Idea

Adam Caller, CEO and founder of Tutors International, which is supporting the family in their search, said that notwithstanding first doubt, he found the idea "visionary", and "progressive".

When he spoke with the family, he noted they recognized the unusual aspect of their request, and how immature their son is.

But, they explained that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to get a tutor, as they had waited until their elder sibling was five, and by that stage "cultural influence had already set in".

What precisely does the family mean by "cultural predisposition"?

It's "everything", Adam responded. "How you eat, the way you speak".

He said the older sibling had adopted "really subtle, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had assumed their cultural norms. The family informed him they did not want the same situation to recur with their younger child.

The strategy: To hire a English tutor, who should speak with standard English accent, to shape the baby from the very start.

Osmotic Learning

"A great deal of the education at the beginning here is kind of absorbed naturally," stated the expert.

It's via this natural absorption that the family are expecting the child will pick up the English characteristics they wish to instil.

He explained the tutor must be an individual who attended "the right kinds of schools – comparable categories of schools as the family plan to send their son to".

"The educator just has to be the appropriate candidate, they'll be carrying out things they aren't even aware they're doing, effortlessly," he said.

Cost Not Relevant

The family told him the selected educator should ideally also have familiarity of or interest in horse riding, alpine skiing, creative fields and musical activities so as to inspire the child in a broad spectrum of interests.

More than that though, he said the family desired the tutor to register the child on a range of lessons so the child would be "equestrian training and picking up an tool by the time they are about three years old".

In the family's perspective, guiding their son develop into a "English gentleman" will lead to success and open doors.

"For all the pros and cons of that, because it's certainly a social class indicator," he notes.

However, despite all this tutelage in "UK identity", might the child absorb what is termed cultural bias from the multicultural family he is raised by anyway?

"Certainly", replied the CEO. "They understand this could fail, but they've just taken the attitude of, 'let's give it a go and let's go as soon as we can', because the expense of it is irrelevant," he explained.

Impractical

A number of in the private teaching field who have those reservations.

Peter Cui, chief executive of a tutoring service, who supplies individual instructors, wrote that "the process of becoming bicultural, or actually, becoming oneself, is something that must be grown into, not designed."

Peter noted that he had emigrated from China to the Britain at the period of seven, and had been educated knowing and living both cultures. He progressed to study at a prestigious UK institution.

"The notion that one individual can function as a living vessel of Britishness, a person who can somehow transfer the characteristics of a English gentleman upon a infant child, appears optimistic and unrealistic," he wrote.

"From my perspective, engaging a quintessentially British tutor from infancy will not instantly create the result they want.

"I wasn't provided with such a figure, and nevertheless I have been lucky enough to live several of the opportunities they aspire for their son."

He continued: "The fact is, cultural identity can not be dictated from the external environment; it must be selected, and it must be internally driven."

Acquiring Englishness

Naturally, UK identity is something the CEO believes can be instructed – and commercialized.

"I believe the reality that the international society holds us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating