"Parents residing in North London seeks an extraordinary and experienced tutor to guide their youngest child on his first steps to turning into an English gentleman."
Looking at this listing, you might readily skip the wording "first-steps" as just a turn of phrase.
But, it might be the most important part of this unique position posting, as it seeks to recruit a mentor for a one-year-old.
Numerous of responses have already been submitted since the anonymous family advertised their call for the £180,000 per year tutor, who has to be "someone very special".
During the past few weeks, the listing has received notice throughout the news, with numerous asking why?
Forward-Thinking Method
A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of an education consultancy, which is supporting the family in their quest, stated that despite initial scepticism, he considered the concept "far sighted", and "progressive".
When he consulted the family, he noted they understood the atypical aspect of their requirement, and how immature their son is.
However, they clarified that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had postponed until their elder sibling was five, and by that age "cultural influence had already taken hold".
What exactly does the family mean by "cultural bias"?
It's "everything", the expert responded. "The way you eat, the manner you speak".
He explained the elder child had adopted "really subtle, unspoken signals" from the family, and had assumed their cultural ways. The family explained to Adam they did not want this pattern to recur with their infant.
The intention: To engage a British tutor, who must speak with standard English accent, to shape the baby from the very start.
Osmotic Learning
"A great deal of the development at the outset here is kind of acquired indirectly," explained Adam.
It's by means of this natural absorption that the family are expecting the child will acquire the British traits they wish to impart.
Adam explained the tutor needed to be somebody who studied at "the appropriate educational institutions – similar types of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The tutor must be the appropriate candidate, they'll be carrying out things they may not realize they're doing, simply by nature," he commented.
Money No Object
The family told him the selected educator should ideally also have knowledge of or enthusiasm in riding, alpine skiing, creative fields and musical activities so as to influence the child in a wide range of passions.
More than that though, he said the family desired the tutor to sign up the child on a range of classes so the child would be "horseback riding and picking up an tool by the time they are approximately three years old".
In the family's minds, assisting their son develop into a "UK sophisticate" will bring about achievement and provide access.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a class statement," he adds.
However, despite all this tutelage in "Britishness", might the child absorb so-called cultural bias from the international family he lives with regardless?
"Certainly", said the CEO. "They know this could fail, but they've simply adopted the perspective of, 'let's give it a go and we should start as soon as we can', because the price of it is irrelevant," he explained.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
Several in the tutoring industry who have similar concerns.
Another CEO, chief executive of Blue Education, who provides individual instructors, stated that "the journey of becoming bicultural, or indeed, discovering oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not engineered."
The expert wrote that he had relocated from the Far East to the United Kingdom at the time of childhood, and had been raised experiencing and embodying dual heritages. He progressed to study at Cambridge University.
"The concept that an individual can act as a representation of English culture, an individual who can possibly impart the qualities of a British gentleman onto a infant child, strikes me as naive and impractical," he commented.
"In my experience, having a typically English tutor from infancy will does not necessarily achieve the goal they desire.
"I did not have that kind of mentor, and yet I have been fortunate enough to enjoy numerous of the opportunities they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The fact is, self-identity cannot be forced from the external environment; it must be chosen, and it must be internally driven."
Buying Britishness
Of course, English culture is something the CEO believes can be instructed – and marketed.
"I think the situation that the international society views us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
