"Parents residing in north London is looking for an extraordinary and experienced educator to assist their most junior child on his initial journey to becoming an British gentleman."
When reading this advertisement, you might easily skip the wording "first-steps" as mere an expression.
However, it may be the crucial aspect of this distinctive job advert, as it aims to find a teacher for a one-year-old.
Numerous of responses have now been sent in since the unnamed family posted their request for the £180,000 per year tutor, who has to be "someone very special".
During the past few weeks, the listing has received attention throughout the press, with many questioning why?
Forward-Thinking Method
Adam Caller, chief executive of an education consultancy, which is assisting the family in their search, said that notwithstanding initial scepticism, he viewed the concept "forward-looking", and "advanced".
When he met the family, he mentioned they appreciated the unusual nature of their request, and how immature their son is.
But, they explained that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their firstborn was five, and by that age "cultural influence had already set in".
But what does the family indicate by "cultural leaning"?
It's "comprehensive", he responded. "The manner you eat, how you speak".
He said the older sibling had picked up "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had taken on their cultural norms. The family told Adam they wished to avoid the same situation to recur with their new baby.
The intention: To bring in a UK tutor, who should speak with standard English accent, to guide the baby from the very start.
Osmotic Learning
"A lot of the development at the beginning here is somewhat absorbed naturally," said Adam.
It's by means of this natural absorption that the family are aiming the child will pick up the English characteristics they aim to instil.
He said the tutor needed to be somebody who attended "the appropriate educational institutions – comparable categories of schools as the family plan to send their son to".
"The educator must be the suitable individual, they'll be performing things they don't even know they're doing, simply by nature," he said.
Cost Not Relevant
The family explained to him the chosen tutor should ideally also have knowledge of or interest in equestrian activities, winter sports, the arts and music so as to shape the child in a wide range of passions.
More than that though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to enrol the child on a selection of courses so the child would be "horseback riding and starting an musical instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, assisting their son develop into a "English gentleman" will bring about achievement and open doors.
"Taking into account the pros and cons of that, because it's undoubtedly a status symbol," he adds.
Yet, in spite of all this tutelage in "UK identity", might the child absorb so-called cultural influence from the multicultural family he is raised by regardless?
"Certainly", answered the CEO. "They know this could fail, but they've merely embraced the view of, 'why not attempt it and we should start as soon as we can', because the expense of it is irrelevant," he said.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
A number of in the education sector who express these concerns.
An education leader, CEO and founder of a tutoring service, who also offer private tutors, commented that "the process of adopting dual cultures, or in fact, forming one's identity, is something that must be grown into, not designed."
The expert explained that he had relocated from the Far East to the Britain at the time of 7 years old, and had been raised experiencing and living two backgrounds. He went on to learn at Cambridge University.
"The concept that an individual can serve as a living vessel of UK identity, someone who can somehow transplant the qualities of a English gentleman to a 12-month-old child, seems to me optimistic and unfeasible," he commented.
"In my experience, employing a typically British tutor from infancy will not automatically create the outcome they desire.
"I wasn't provided with such a tutor, and yet I have been privileged enough to enjoy many of the opportunities they desire for their son."
He continued: "The fact is, self-identity cannot be dictated from the outside influences; it must be embraced, and it must be internally driven."
Buying Britishness
Of course, English culture is something the expert thinks can be instructed – and marketed.
"In my view the fact that the international society holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
