"A family located in North London is looking for an remarkable and qualified tutor to guide their youngest child on his first steps to becoming an British gentleman."
Upon seeing this post, you might easily overlook the wording "first-steps" as simple a turn of phrase.
Yet, it may be the most significant aspect of this unusual position posting, as it aims to find a tutor for a one-year-old.
Many of applications have already been received since the anonymous family published their request for the £180,000 per year tutor, who must be "an exceptional individual".
In recent few weeks, the post has received attention throughout the news, with many wondering why?
Innovative Idea
Adam Caller, head and founder of Tutors International, which is assisting the family in their quest, said that notwithstanding first scepticism, he considered the plan "visionary", and "progressive".
When he consulted the family, he mentioned they recognized the unusual nature of their requirement, and how young their son is.
However, they explained that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had held off until their older child was five, and by that point "cultural influence had by then taken hold".
What precisely does the family refer to by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "everything", Adam replied. "How you eat, how you speak".
He said the older sibling had absorbed "very nuanced, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had adopted their cultural ways. The family informed the consultant they wished to avoid this pattern to repeat itself with their younger child.
The intention: To bring in a English tutor, who should speak with RP, to shape the baby right from the beginning.
Natural Absorption
"A great deal of the learning at the outset here is somewhat acquired indirectly," explained the CEO.
It's via this osmosis that the family are aiming the child will adopt the UK customs they aim to instil.
The consultant noted the tutor needed to be someone who went to "prestigious academies – comparable categories of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The instructor just has to be the suitable individual, they'll be performing things they may not realize they're doing, effortlessly," he commented.
Expense Not a Factor
The family explained to Adam the successful candidate should preferably also have knowledge of or passion in riding, winter sports, artistic pursuits and musical activities so as to shape the child in a broad spectrum of interests.
Furthermore though, he stated the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a range of courses so the child would be "pony-riding and learning an musical instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's minds, helping their son become a "British gentleman" will result in success and provide access.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a class statement," he adds.
But, notwithstanding all this tutelage in "UK identity", might the child pick up so-called cultural influence from the multicultural family he is raised by anyway?
"Absolutely", said Adam. "The parents understand this may not work, but they've simply adopted the perspective of, 'let's give it a go and let's go as quickly as we can', because the price of it is not a concern," he said.
Impractical
Several in the private teaching field who express those reservations.
An education leader, head and founder of an educational organization, who supplies personal educators, commented that "the process of adopting dual cultures, or indeed, becoming oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not engineered."
He wrote that he had moved from the Far East to the UK at the time of childhood, and had been educated knowing and embodying dual heritages. He went on to be educated at Cambridge University.
"The idea that one individual can function as a representation of UK identity, someone who can possibly transplant the characteristics of a English gentleman upon a one-year-old child, seems to me naive and unfeasible," he commented.
"In my experience, employing a typically British tutor from infancy will does not necessarily create the outcome they hope for.
"I wasn't provided with such a tutor, and yet I have been fortunate enough to enjoy numerous of the situations they aspire for their son."
He stated: "The truth is, cultural identity can not be imposed from the outside influences; it must be chosen, and it must be internally driven."
Purchasing UK Culture
Of course, English culture is something the CEO thinks can be taught – and commercialized.
"I believe the situation that the global community holds us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
