"A household residing in North London seeks an remarkable and experienced tutor to guide their smallest child on his first steps to turning into an English gentleman."
Looking at this post, you might easily miss the term "first-steps" as simple a turn of phrase.
However, it could be the crucial aspect of this distinctive position posting, as it seeks to recruit a tutor for a 12-month-old.
Numerous of responses have since been submitted since the anonymous family published their call for the £180,000 per year tutor, who needs to be "someone very special".
Over the last few weeks, the listing has gained interest across the media, with many questioning why?
Forward-Thinking Method
A tutoring expert, head and founder of Tutors International, which is helping the family in their quest, stated that in spite of early skepticism, he considered the concept "forward-looking", and "advanced".
When he met the family, he mentioned they understood the unusual aspect of their requirement, and how young their son is.
But, they stated that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had postponed until their firstborn was five, and by that age "cultural influence had already taken hold".
But what did the family mean by "cultural leaning"?
It's "everything", Adam responded. "How you eat, how you speak".
He explained the firstborn had picked up "very nuanced, body language" from the family, and had assumed their cultural ways. The family explained to the consultant they did not want the same situation to happen again with their new baby.
The strategy: To engage a English tutor, who should speak with RP, to guide the baby right from the beginning.
Osmotic Learning
"Much of the education at the start here is kind of osmotic," stated the CEO.
It's through this natural absorption that the family are hoping the child will pick up the British traits they aim to impart.
The consultant explained the tutor must be someone who studied at "the appropriate educational institutions – similar types of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The tutor must be the right kind of person, they'll be carrying out things they don't even know they're doing, effortlessly," he said.
Expense Not a Factor
The family explained to him the chosen tutor should preferably also have familiarity of or passion in horse riding, alpine skiing, creative fields and musical activities so as to shape the child in a diverse set of passions.
More than that though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a selection of courses so the child would be "horseback riding and learning an instrument by the time they are approximately three years old".
In the family's view, helping their son grow into a "British gentleman" will lead to achievement and provide access.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's undoubtedly a social class indicator," he adds.
However, in spite of all this instruction in "Britishness", might the child absorb so-called cultural bias from the international family he is raised by anyway?
"Yes", said he. "The family realize this could fail, but they've simply adopted the attitude of, 'let's give it a go and we should start as early as we can', because the cost of it is irrelevant," he said.
Overly Optimistic
There are some in the private teaching field who have similar reservations.
Peter Cui, chief executive of an educational organization, who also offer individual instructors, stated that "the process of becoming bicultural, or actually, forming one's identity, is something that must be experienced personally, not manufactured."
Peter noted that he had moved from Asia to the United Kingdom at the time of seven, and had been educated understanding and living two backgrounds. He continued to study at the University of Cambridge.
"The concept that an individual can serve as a embodiment of UK identity, someone who can possibly transplant the characteristics of a English gentleman to a one-year-old child, seems to me idealistic and impractical," he stated.
"From my perspective, engaging a typically UK tutor from babyhood will will not necessarily create the result they want.
"I did not have such a figure, and yet I have been lucky enough to experience numerous of the experiences they hope for their son."
He continued: "The reality is, cultural identity can not be dictated from the external environment; it must be embraced, and it must be internally driven."
Acquiring Englishness
Naturally, English culture is something the CEO hopes can be taught – and sold.
"In my view the fact that the international society holds us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
