"Parents residing in the northern part of London is looking for an remarkable and skilled instructor to support their youngest child on his early path to growing into an English gentleman."
Looking at this post, you might easily overlook the phrase "first-steps" as simple a turn of phrase.
However, it might be the most significant part of this unique employment listing, as it seeks to recruit a teacher for a one-year-old.
Many of responses have since been submitted since the anonymous family advertised their request for the highly paid tutor, who needs to be "someone very special".
In recent few weeks, the post has attracted attention throughout the press, with numerous questioning why?
Innovative Idea
The CEO, head and founder of an education consultancy, which is assisting the family in their search, said that in spite of initial scepticism, he found the concept "visionary", and "innovative".
When he met the family, he said they understood the unusual character of their demand, and how young their son is.
Nevertheless, they clarified that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had waited until their elder sibling was five, and by that stage "cultural conditioning had already set in".
What precisely did the family refer to by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "comprehensive", Adam answered. "How you eat, the way you speak".
He explained the elder child had absorbed "extremely delicate, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had taken on their cultural habits. The family informed the consultant they did not want history to repeat itself with their infant.
The strategy: To hire a UK tutor, who should speak with RP, to guide the baby from day one.
Natural Absorption
"A great deal of the development at the outset here is rather acquired indirectly," said the CEO.
It's by means of this subtle influence that the family are aiming the child will pick up the UK customs they wish to instil.
He noted the tutor must be an individual who attended "the right kinds of schools – comparable categories of schools as the family hope to send their son to".
"The instructor must be the right kind of person, they'll be carrying out things they don't even know they're doing, effortlessly," he said.
Cost Not Relevant
The family informed Adam the chosen tutor should preferably also have knowledge of or passion in equestrian activities, skiing, the arts and music so as to inspire the child in a broad spectrum of interests.
More than that though, he said the family hoped the tutor to enrol the child on a variety of courses so the child would be "horseback riding and learning an tool by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's view, assisting their son develop into a "UK sophisticate" will lead to achievement and provide access.
"For all the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's certainly a status symbol," he notes.
But, despite all this guidance in "English culture", would the child absorb so-called cultural influence from the globally influenced family he lives with regardless?
"Yes", said he. "The family understand this might not succeed, but they've just taken the view of, 'we should try and let's go as soon as we can', because the price of it is not relevant," he explained.
Idealistic and Unrealistic
There are some in the education sector who express those concerns.
Another CEO, chief executive of an educational organization, who supplies personal educators, wrote that "the development of becoming bicultural, or indeed, discovering oneself, is something that must be grown into, not manufactured."
He noted that he had emigrated from China to the UK at the age of seven, and had been raised experiencing and practicing dual heritages. He continued to study at the University of Cambridge.
"The concept that one individual can act as a living vessel of UK identity, someone who can in some way transplant the characteristics of a British gentleman onto a 12-month-old child, seems to me naive and impractical," he commented.
"From my perspective, engaging a typically UK tutor from infancy will will not automatically achieve the result they hope for.
"I never had that kind of mentor, and however I have been lucky enough to enjoy many of the opportunities they desire for their son."
He added: "The truth is, cultural identity should not be imposed from the external environment; it must be selected, and it must be internally driven."
Acquiring Englishness
Of course, English culture is something Adam thinks can be instructed – and commercialized.
"I believe the fact that the global community holds us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating