"A family residing in north London is looking for an exceptional and skilled tutor to assist their youngest child on his early path to growing into an English gentleman."
When reading this advertisement, you might easily skip the term "first-steps" as mere a turn of phrase.
Yet, it could be the crucial element of this distinctive position posting, as it aims to recruit a tutor for a infant.
Hundreds of applications have now been submitted since the anonymous family published their call for the £180,000 per year tutor, who must be "someone very special".
During the past few weeks, the advert has received notice across the media, with numerous questioning why?
Innovative Idea
Adam Caller, CEO and founder of Tutors International, which is assisting the family in their quest, stated that in spite of early skepticism, he considered the idea "forward-looking", and "advanced".
When he met the family, he said they recognized the unconventional aspect of their request, and how early in age their son is.
Nevertheless, they stated that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that point "cultural bias had already taken hold".
What exactly does the family refer to by "cultural leaning"?
It's "comprehensive", Adam answered. "How you eat, the way you speak".
He said the elder child had adopted "very nuanced, body language" from the family, and had taken on their cultural norms. The family explained to the consultant they wished to avoid this pattern to recur with their younger child.
The plan: To engage a English tutor, who needs to speak with Received Pronunciation, to guide the baby from the very start.
Natural Absorption
"A great deal of the learning at the outset here is rather acquired indirectly," said the CEO.
It's by means of this osmosis that the family are aiming the child will adopt the English characteristics they want to cultivate.
Adam noted the tutor must be someone who went to "the right kinds of schools – similar types of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The tutor just has to be the suitable individual, they'll be carrying out things they don't even know they're doing, effortlessly," he added.
Cost Not Relevant
The family told him the selected educator should preferably also have knowledge of or enthusiasm in riding, winter sports, artistic pursuits and instrumental training so as to shape the child in a broad spectrum of hobbies.
More than that though, he said the family hoped the tutor to register the child on a range of courses 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 "British gentleman" will lead to success and provide access.
"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's undoubtedly a class statement," he adds.
But, in spite of all this instruction in "UK identity", could the child pick up alleged cultural bias from the international family he is raised by anyway?
"Yes", said the CEO. "The family know this may not work, but they've just taken the attitude of, 'let's give it a go and we'll proceed as quickly as we can', because the expense of it is not a concern," he said.
Impractical
Several in the education sector who express those reservations.
Another CEO, head and founder of an educational organization, who provides private tutors, commented that "the development of embracing two identities, or actually, becoming oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not manufactured."
He wrote that he had emigrated from the Far East to the United Kingdom at the age of 7 years old, and had been brought up understanding and practicing both cultures. He went on to learn at the University of Cambridge.
"The concept that one individual can act as a living vessel of Britishness, an individual who can possibly impart the qualities of a UK sophisticate upon a one-year-old child, appears idealistic and unfeasible," he stated.
"From my perspective, engaging a quintessentially UK tutor from infancy will does not necessarily create the result they desire.
"I never had that kind of mentor, and yet I have been lucky enough to live numerous of the opportunities they hope for their son."
He added: "The reality is, cultural identity cannot be imposed from the external environment; it must be embraced, and it must be internally driven."
Buying Britishness
Naturally, UK identity is something the CEO hopes can be taught – and commercialized.
"I believe the fact that the global community holds us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
