"A family residing in North London seeks an remarkable and experienced tutor to support their most junior child on his initial journey to becoming an English gentleman."
Upon seeing this advertisement, you might easily miss the phrase "first-steps" as mere figurative language.
Yet, it may be the crucial aspect of this unique employment listing, as it seeks to recruit a mentor for a one-year-old.
Numerous of submissions have already been received since the unnamed family posted their search for the highly paid tutor, who has to be "someone very special".
In recent few weeks, the listing has received notice across the media, with numerous asking why?
Innovative Idea
A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of Tutors International, which is helping the family in their hunt, stated that despite initial skepticism, he considered the idea "visionary", and "progressive".
When he spoke with the family, he noted they appreciated the atypical character of their request, and how immature their son is.
But, they stated that they "preferred not to postpone any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had postponed until their elder sibling was five, and by that point "cultural conditioning had already taken hold".
But what did the family indicate by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "all-encompassing", Adam answered. "The manner you eat, how you speak".
He explained the elder child had adopted "very nuanced, body language" from the family, and had adopted their cultural ways. The family told Adam they wished to avoid history to repeat itself with their new baby.
The plan: To hire a English tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to guide the baby right from the beginning.
Natural Absorption
"Much of the learning at the outset here is somewhat osmotic," said the CEO.
It's via this subtle influence that the family are hoping the child will pick up the British traits they wish to impart.
He noted the tutor must be somebody who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – comparable categories of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The instructor simply needs to be the right kind of person, they'll be doing things they may not realize they're doing, simply by nature," he added.
Cost Not Relevant
The family told the expert the selected educator should ideally also have knowledge of or passion in horse riding, skiing, the arts and instrumental training so as to influence the child in a diverse set of hobbies.
Furthermore though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to enrol the child on a variety of courses so the child would be "horseback riding and picking up an instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's minds, guiding their son grow into a "British gentleman" will result in success and provide access.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's undoubtedly a status symbol," he notes.
However, in spite of all this tutelage in "English culture", would the child absorb so-called cultural leaning from the multicultural family he lives with in any case?
"Absolutely", replied the CEO. "The parents understand this could fail, but they've just taken the perspective of, 'why not attempt it and we should start as quickly as we can', because the expense of it is not a concern," he said.
Impractical
A number of in the education sector who share these reservations.
An education leader, chief executive of a tutoring service, who also offer individual instructors, commented that "the process of becoming bicultural, or indeed, forming one's identity, is something that must be experienced personally, not designed."
The expert wrote that he had emigrated from China to the United Kingdom at the age of childhood, and had been raised knowing and practicing both cultures. He went on to learn at Cambridge University.
"The notion that one individual can act as a representation of Britishness, a person who can somehow transfer the attributes of a British gentleman onto a one-year-old child, appears idealistic and unrealistic," he wrote.
"From my perspective, employing a typically English tutor from infancy will will not necessarily achieve the goal they hope for.
"I did not have such a figure, and yet I have been privileged enough to live several of the experiences they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The reality is, self-identity can not be forced from the outside; it must be selected, and it must originate internally."
Buying Britishness
Naturally, Britishness is something Adam thinks can be educated – and commercialized.
"In my view the reality that the global community holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
