"A family based in north London wants to find an extraordinary and experienced instructor to guide their youngest child on his early path to turning into an English gentleman."
When reading this listing, you might easily miss the term "first-steps" as mere figurative language.
Yet, it might be the most significant element of this distinctive employment listing, as it aims to hire a teacher for a infant.
Hundreds of submissions have since been submitted since the anonymous family published their call for the £180k-a-year tutor, who must be "someone very special".
During the past few weeks, the post has received notice across the news, with numerous questioning why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, chief executive of a global tutoring firm, which is supporting the family in their search, explained that despite early doubt, he considered the idea "forward-looking", and "advanced".
When he consulted the family, he said they appreciated the unusual nature of their demand, and how immature their son is.
Nevertheless, they explained that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that point "cultural conditioning had already set in".
But what did the family mean by "cultural leaning"?
It's "comprehensive", Adam responded. "The manner you eat, the way you speak".
He said the firstborn had absorbed "extremely delicate, unspoken signals" from the family, and had assumed their cultural norms. The family told him they hoped to prevent the same situation to happen again with their infant.
The strategy: To bring in a UK tutor, who needs to speak with RP, to shape the baby right from the beginning.
Osmotic Learning
"A lot of the education at the start here is kind of acquired indirectly," said the expert.
It's by means of this osmosis that the family are aiming the child will pick up the British traits they want to instil.
The consultant said the tutor needed to be an individual who went to "the right kinds of schools – comparable categories of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The instructor simply needs to be the appropriate candidate, they'll be performing things they don't even know they're doing, effortlessly," he commented.
Cost Not Relevant
The family informed the expert the selected educator should preferably also have understanding of or enthusiasm in equestrian activities, skiing, the arts and instrumental training so as to influence the child in a diverse set of interests.
More than that though, he stated the family desired the tutor to enrol the child on a selection of lessons so the child would be "pony-riding and starting an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's perspective, helping their son develop into a "UK sophisticate" will result in success and provide access.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a class statement," he comments.
Yet, notwithstanding all this guidance in "Britishness", might the child adopt so-called cultural influence from the multicultural family he resides with regardless?
"Yes", said Adam. "They understand this could fail, but they've simply adopted the view of, 'let's give it a go and we should start as early as we can', because the price of it is not a concern," he stated.
Overly Optimistic
A number of in the private teaching field who express similar concerns.
Peter Cui, chief executive of a tutoring service, who supplies personal educators, stated that "the process of adopting dual cultures, or actually, discovering oneself, is something that must be grown into, not engineered."
He noted that he had emigrated from the Far East to the UK at the age of seven, and had been brought up experiencing and practicing two backgrounds. He continued to study at the University of Cambridge.
"The notion that one individual can act as a representation of Britishness, an individual who can possibly impart the qualities of a British gentleman upon a 12-month-old child, appears optimistic and unfeasible," he commented.
"Based on my background, engaging a quintessentially English tutor from infancy will not instantly create the result they desire.
"I did not have such a figure, and nevertheless I have been privileged enough to live many of the situations they desire for their son."
He stated: "The fact is, self-identity should not be imposed from the outside; it must be embraced, and it must come from within."
Buying Britishness
Of course, English culture is something the CEO thinks can be taught – and marketed.
"I believe the reality that the international society views us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
