"A household based in North London is looking for an remarkable and qualified tutor to guide their smallest child on his early path to becoming an English gentleman."
When reading this post, you might easily miss the wording "first-steps" as simple figurative language.
However, it may be the most significant aspect of this unusual job advert, as it attempts to find a mentor for a 12-month-old.
Many of responses have now been sent in since the unidentified family advertised their search for the highly paid tutor, who needs to be "someone very special".
During the past few weeks, the advert has attracted interest across the press, with numerous questioning why?
Forward-Thinking Method
A tutoring expert, head and founder of Tutors International, which is helping the family in their hunt, explained that despite first doubt, he considered the idea "forward-looking", and "advanced".
When he met the family, he noted they understood the atypical nature of their request, and how immature their son is.
Nevertheless, they stated that they "preferred not to postpone any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that stage "cultural bias had already become established".
But what does the family mean by "cultural bias"?
It's "comprehensive", Adam responded. "The manner you eat, the manner you speak".
He explained the firstborn had adopted "really subtle, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had adopted their cultural habits. The family told Adam they hoped to prevent the same situation to repeat itself with their infant.
The plan: To hire a English tutor, who must speak with Received Pronunciation, to guide the baby from the very start.
Natural Absorption
"Much of the learning at the beginning here is kind of osmotic," said Adam.
It's by means of this osmosis that the family are hoping the child will adopt the English characteristics they wish to cultivate.
Adam explained the tutor had to be an individual who went to "prestigious academies – the same kinds of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The tutor must be the suitable individual, they'll be doing things they may not realize they're doing, just naturally," he added.
Money No Object
The family told Adam the selected educator should ideally also have understanding of or passion in horse riding, skiing, the arts and music so as to shape the child in a wide range of passions.
Furthermore though, he said the family hoped the tutor to enrol the child on a range of lessons so the child would be "pony-riding and starting an tool by the time they are about three years old".
In the family's minds, assisting their son become a "UK sophisticate" will result in success and create opportunities.
"Taking into account the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's definitely a social class indicator," he notes.
But, notwithstanding all this instruction in "English culture", might the child pick up alleged cultural leaning from the multicultural family he lives with in any case?
"Certainly", said Adam. "The family understand this could fail, but they've just taken the view of, 'why not attempt it and we'll proceed as early as we can', because the cost of it is irrelevant," he explained.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
Several in the tutoring industry who share similar doubts.
An education leader, head and founder of Blue Education, who also offer private tutors, stated that "the journey of becoming bicultural, or actually, forming one's identity, is something that must be lived into, not designed."
The expert wrote that he had emigrated from the Far East to the United Kingdom at the age of childhood, and had been raised experiencing and living two backgrounds. He progressed to study at Cambridge University.
"The idea that an individual can serve as a living vessel of English culture, an individual who can possibly transfer the qualities of a UK sophisticate onto a one-year-old child, strikes me as optimistic and unfeasible," he wrote.
"Based on my background, having a typically British tutor from early childhood will not instantly produce the goal they hope for.
"I never had such a figure, and however I have been privileged enough to live numerous of the situations they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The fact is, self-identity can not be forced from the external environment; it must be embraced, and it must originate internally."
Purchasing UK Culture
Of course, English culture is something the expert thinks can be educated – and marketed.
"In my view the reality that the international society regards us in this light is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
