"Parents located in the northern part of London wants to find an exceptional and skilled instructor to guide their smallest child on his early path to becoming an English gentleman."
Upon seeing this post, you might easily miss the phrase "first-steps" as simple figurative language.
Yet, it may be the most important part of this unusual employment listing, as it attempts to recruit a mentor for a 12-month-old.
Hundreds of applications have already been submitted since the anonymous family advertised their request for the £180,000 per year tutor, who needs to be "someone very special".
During the past few weeks, the advert has gained interest in the media, with many wondering why?
Progressive Approach
A tutoring expert, chief executive of an education consultancy, which is helping the family in their quest, explained that in spite of first scepticism, he considered the concept "visionary", and "advanced".
When he met the family, he mentioned they understood the unusual character of their demand, and how young their son is.
Nevertheless, they clarified that they "preferred not to postpone any longer" to get a tutor, as they had postponed until their elder sibling was five, and by that stage "cultural influence had already taken hold".
What precisely did the family mean by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "everything", the expert answered. "The way you eat, the manner you speak".
He said the elder child had picked up "really subtle, body language" from the family, and had assumed their cultural ways. The family explained to the consultant they wished to avoid this pattern to recur with their infant.
The plan: To hire a English tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to shape the baby right from the beginning.
Osmotic Learning
"Much of the learning at the start here is somewhat osmotic," explained Adam.
It's via this osmosis that the family are aiming the child will adopt the English characteristics they want to impart.
He explained the tutor had to be someone who attended "prestigious academies – the same kinds of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The tutor must be the right kind of person, they'll be performing things they aren't even aware they're doing, just naturally," he added.
Cost Not Relevant
The family told him the chosen tutor should ideally also have understanding of or passion in equestrian activities, skiing, the arts and music so as to shape the child in a diverse set of interests.
Furthermore though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a variety of classes so the child would be "pony-riding and starting an instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, guiding their son develop into a "English gentleman" will bring about achievement and open doors.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a social class indicator," he notes.
Yet, notwithstanding all this tutelage in "Britishness", would the child adopt what is termed cultural bias from the globally influenced family he resides with anyway?
"Absolutely", replied the CEO. "The family know this could fail, but they've merely embraced the view of, 'we should try and let's go as soon as we can', because the cost of it is irrelevant," he stated.
Impractical
Several in the private teaching field who have these doubts.
An education leader, CEO and founder of Blue Education, who supplies personal educators, commented that "the development of becoming bicultural, or indeed, forming one's identity, is something that must be grown into, not engineered."
The expert noted that he had moved from the Far East to the Britain at the period of seven, and had been raised understanding and living two backgrounds. He continued to learn at Cambridge University.
"The notion that a single person can serve as a embodiment of UK identity, someone who can somehow transfer the attributes of a English gentleman to a infant child, strikes me as idealistic and unfeasible," he wrote.
"In my experience, having a typically British tutor from infancy will does not automatically create the result they hope for.
"I did not have such a tutor, and yet I have been privileged enough to live several of the experiences they hope for their son."
He continued: "The reality is, cultural identity cannot be forced from the outside; it must be selected, and it must be internally driven."
Purchasing UK Culture
Naturally, UK identity is something Adam hopes can be taught – and sold.
"I believe the situation that the international society holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
