"Parents based in North London wants to find an remarkable and experienced educator to support their smallest child on his initial journey to turning into an English gentleman."
When reading this post, you might naturally skip the wording "first-steps" as simple an expression.
Yet, it might be the most significant part of this distinctive position posting, as it aims to hire a tutor for a one-year-old.
Hundreds of submissions have now been submitted since the anonymous family posted their request for the highly paid tutor, who must be "someone very special".
In recent few weeks, the post has gained attention throughout the media, with many wondering why?
Forward-Thinking Method
A tutoring expert, head and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is helping the family in their search, said that despite first doubt, he considered the idea "visionary", and "progressive".
When he consulted the family, he said they recognized the atypical character of their demand, and how immature their son is.
But, they stated that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that point "cultural bias had already become established".
What precisely did the family indicate by "cultural leaning"?
It's "comprehensive", he replied. "The way you eat, how you speak".
He stated the firstborn had adopted "really subtle, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had adopted their cultural ways. The family informed Adam they did not want this pattern to repeat itself with their younger child.
The strategy: To engage a British tutor, who must speak with Received Pronunciation, to shape the baby from day one.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the education at the outset here is rather absorbed naturally," said the expert.
It's via this osmosis that the family are expecting the child will adopt the UK customs they want to cultivate.
Adam noted the tutor needed to be an individual who went to "prestigious academies – similar types of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The tutor simply needs to be the suitable individual, they'll be doing things they don't even know they're doing, just naturally," he said.
Money No Object
The family told Adam the successful candidate should preferably also have knowledge of or interest in equestrian activities, skiing, artistic pursuits and music so as to inspire the child in a diverse set of passions.
More than that though, he explained the family desired the tutor to sign up the child on a variety of courses so the child would be "equestrian training and learning an musical instrument by the time they are approximately three years old".
In the family's minds, helping their son become a "English gentleman" will lead to achievement and open doors.
"For all the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's undoubtedly a class statement," he comments.
But, notwithstanding all this guidance in "English culture", would the child adopt what is termed cultural leaning from the international family he is raised by in any case?
"Absolutely", replied the CEO. "They realize this might not succeed, but they've just taken the attitude of, 'why not attempt it and we'll proceed as soon as we can', because the cost of it is not relevant," he stated.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
A number of in the tutoring industry who share those reservations.
Another CEO, head and founder of Blue Education, who also offer personal educators, commented that "the process of embracing two identities, or indeed, becoming oneself, is something that must be lived into, not manufactured."
Peter explained that he had emigrated from Asia to the Britain at the period of childhood, and had been raised knowing and living both cultures. He went on to be educated at a prestigious UK institution.
"The notion that an individual can serve as a embodiment of English culture, a person who can somehow transplant the attributes of a UK sophisticate to a 12-month-old child, strikes me as naive and impractical," he commented.
"In my experience, engaging a quintessentially British tutor from early childhood will not necessarily produce the result they hope for.
"I did not have such a figure, and however I have been privileged enough to experience numerous of the situations they desire for their son."
He stated: "The reality is, self-identity can not be dictated from the external environment; it must be embraced, and it must originate internally."
Buying Britishness
Of course, Britishness is something Adam hopes can be educated – and commercialized.
"In my view the fact that the world holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
