"A family located in North London is looking for an extraordinary and qualified tutor to guide their most junior child on his initial journey to turning into an British gentleman."
Looking at this advertisement, you might naturally miss the phrase "first-steps" as mere figurative language.
However, it may be the crucial part of this distinctive position posting, as it seeks to find a tutor for a 12-month-old.
Numerous of submissions have now been sent in since the unidentified family published their search for the £180k-a-year tutor, who must be "someone very special".
During the past few weeks, the listing has gained notice across the press, with many questioning why?
Progressive Approach
Adam Caller, head and founder of an education consultancy, which is helping the family in their quest, said that in spite of early scepticism, he considered the concept "visionary", and "innovative".
When he consulted the family, he said they recognized the unconventional aspect of their request, and how immature their son is.
Nevertheless, they stated that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that point "cultural conditioning had already become established".
What precisely did the family indicate by "cultural bias"?
It's "all-encompassing", the expert responded. "How you eat, how you speak".
He explained the older sibling had absorbed "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had assumed their cultural ways. The family explained to him they did not want this pattern to recur with their infant.
The strategy: To engage a UK tutor, who needs to speak with RP, to shape the baby from day one.
Natural Absorption
"A great deal of the development at the outset here is kind of osmotic," stated Adam.
It's through this natural absorption that the family are hoping the child will pick up the English characteristics they want to instil.
The consultant noted the tutor needed to be somebody who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – similar types of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The educator simply needs to be the right kind of person, they'll be doing things they aren't even aware they're doing, just naturally," he commented.
Expense Not a Factor
The family informed him the chosen tutor should ideally also have understanding of or enthusiasm in riding, skiing, the arts and instrumental training so as to shape the child in a diverse set of passions.
Additionally though, he explained the family desired the tutor to sign up 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 develop into a "UK sophisticate" will result in achievement and create opportunities.
"Taking into account the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's undoubtedly a class statement," he notes.
Yet, notwithstanding all this instruction in "Britishness", could the child adopt so-called cultural leaning from the international family he is raised by in any case?
"Absolutely", answered the CEO. "The family realize this could fail, but they've just taken the perspective of, 'let's give it a go and we'll proceed as early as we can', because the price of it is irrelevant," he explained.
Overly Optimistic
Several in the tutoring industry who express these concerns.
Another CEO, chief executive of a tutoring service, who supplies individual instructors, commented that "the journey of becoming bicultural, or actually, discovering oneself, is something that must be lived into, not engineered."
Peter wrote that he had emigrated from Asia to the UK at the age of seven, and had been brought up experiencing and living dual heritages. He went on to study at Cambridge University.
"The idea that one individual can act as a living vessel of UK identity, someone who can in some way transplant the characteristics of a English gentleman upon a one-year-old child, appears idealistic and impractical," he wrote.
"In my experience, engaging a distinctly UK tutor from early childhood will not necessarily create the goal they desire.
"I never had such a tutor, and yet I have been privileged enough to live numerous of the situations they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The fact is, cultural identity should not be dictated from the outside influences; it must be embraced, and it must originate internally."
Acquiring Englishness
Of course, UK identity is something the CEO hopes can be instructed – and commercialized.
"I think the reality that the global community holds us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
