"A household based in North London wants to find an remarkable and experienced educator to guide their most junior child on his early path to growing into an English gentleman."
When reading this advertisement, you might easily miss the phrase "first-steps" as simple an expression.
However, it could be the most important element of this distinctive position posting, as it seeks to find a teacher for a one-year-old.
Many of applications have now been received since the anonymous family posted their search for the £180k-a-year tutor, who has to be "a uniquely qualified person".
In recent few weeks, the advert has gained interest throughout the media, with several wondering why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, head and founder of Tutors International, which is helping the family in their search, explained that notwithstanding first doubt, he considered the plan "far sighted", and "progressive".
When he met the family, he noted they understood the unusual nature of their requirement, and how immature their son is.
However, they explained that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to get a tutor, as they had postponed until their firstborn was five, and by that stage "cultural bias had already set in".
But what did the family mean by "cultural bias"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam responded. "How you eat, the way you speak".
He explained the older sibling had adopted "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had taken on their cultural ways. The family told him they wished to avoid history to happen again with their younger child.
The strategy: To engage a UK tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to influence the baby right from the beginning.
Natural Absorption
"A great deal of the development at the start here is somewhat osmotic," explained Adam.
It's via this subtle influence that the family are aiming the child will adopt the British traits they aim to instil.
Adam explained the tutor must be someone who studied at "prestigious academies – similar types of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The instructor simply needs to be the suitable individual, they'll be performing things they don't even know they're doing, just naturally," he commented.
Expense Not a Factor
The family explained to the expert the chosen tutor should ideally also have familiarity of or interest in riding, alpine skiing, the arts and music so as to influence the child in a broad spectrum of interests.
Additionally though, he stated the family wanted the tutor to sign up the child on a selection of classes so the child would be "horseback riding and starting an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's perspective, helping their son grow into a "English gentleman" will bring about success and provide access.
"For all the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's certainly a class statement," he adds.
But, in spite of all this instruction in "UK identity", could the child pick up what is termed cultural leaning from the multicultural family he is raised by in any case?
"Absolutely", replied the CEO. "The family realize this could fail, but they've merely embraced the perspective of, 'let's give it a go and let's go as quickly as we can', because the expense of it is irrelevant," he said.
Impractical
There are some in the tutoring industry who express those reservations.
Peter Cui, chief executive of a tutoring service, who supplies personal educators, stated that "the process of becoming bicultural, or indeed, forming one's identity, is something that must be experienced personally, not designed."
Peter noted that he had emigrated from the Far East to the United Kingdom at the period of 7 years old, and had been educated experiencing and living both cultures. He went on to learn at a prestigious UK institution.
"The idea that one individual can act as a living vessel of English culture, a person who can in some way impart the characteristics of a British gentleman onto a 12-month-old child, seems to me naive and unrealistic," he stated.
"From my perspective, having a distinctly British tutor from babyhood will will not automatically achieve the goal they hope for.
"I never had such a figure, and however I have been privileged enough to live many of the opportunities they hope for their son."
He stated: "The reality is, personal identity cannot be forced from the external environment; it must be chosen, and it must be internally driven."
Acquiring Englishness
Of course, Britishness is something the expert believes can be educated – and marketed.
"I think the reality that the international society holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
