"A household based in the northern part of London wants to find an extraordinary and qualified educator to support their youngest child on his early path to becoming an English gentleman."
Upon seeing this post, you might readily skip the wording "first-steps" as mere figurative language.
However, it might be the most significant part of this distinctive job advert, as it attempts to find a mentor for a infant.
Many of submissions have already been submitted since the anonymous family published their call for the highly paid tutor, who has to be "a uniquely qualified person".
During the past few weeks, the listing has gained interest across the press, with numerous questioning why?
Progressive Approach
A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of Tutors International, which is helping the family in their quest, said that notwithstanding first doubt, he considered the concept "far sighted", and "progressive".
When he met the family, he said they appreciated the unconventional nature of their request, and how young their son is.
Nevertheless, they clarified that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their elder sibling was five, and by that age "cultural bias had already set in".
What exactly does the family mean by "cultural leaning"?
It's "everything", he answered. "The manner you eat, how you speak".
He explained the elder child had picked up "extremely delicate, unspoken signals" 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 intention: To engage a English tutor, who should speak with Received Pronunciation, to guide the baby right from the beginning.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the education at the beginning here is kind of acquired indirectly," said the CEO.
It's through this subtle influence that the family are expecting the child will adopt the English characteristics they want to impart.
He said the tutor had to be somebody who studied at "prestigious academies – similar types of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The tutor just has to be the right kind of person, they'll be performing things they don't even know they're doing, simply by nature," he added.
Expense Not a Factor
The family told the expert the chosen tutor should ideally also have familiarity of or passion in equestrian activities, skiing, artistic pursuits and music so as to shape the child in a wide range of hobbies.
More than that though, he stated the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a selection of lessons so the child would be "pony-riding and picking up an instrument by the time they are approximately three years old".
In the family's minds, assisting their son develop into a "English gentleman" will bring about achievement and provide access.
"For all the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's certainly a status symbol," he adds.
Yet, in spite of all this guidance in "Britishness", might the child absorb so-called cultural leaning from the multicultural family he lives with regardless?
"Yes", said the CEO. "The parents realize this could fail, but they've merely embraced the attitude of, 'let's give it a go and we should start as quickly as we can', because the cost of it is irrelevant," he said.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
A number of in the tutoring industry who share these doubts.
Peter Cui, CEO and founder of an educational organization, who supplies individual instructors, commented that "the development of adopting dual cultures, or in fact, becoming oneself, is something that must be grown into, not engineered."
Peter wrote that he had relocated from China to the United Kingdom at the age of childhood, and had been brought up understanding and practicing two backgrounds. He continued to learn at Cambridge University.
"The concept that one individual can act as a embodiment of UK identity, someone who can somehow impart the characteristics of a English gentleman to a 12-month-old child, strikes me as optimistic and unfeasible," he wrote.
"In my experience, engaging a typically UK tutor from infancy will not instantly achieve the goal they hope for.
"I never had that kind of mentor, and yet I have been privileged enough to live several of the opportunities they aspire for their son."
He continued: "The reality is, self-identity cannot be imposed from the external environment; it must be embraced, and it must originate internally."
Purchasing UK Culture
Of course, Britishness is something the expert thinks can be taught – and sold.
"In my view the situation that the international society regards us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
