"A household located in the northern part of London seeks an exceptional and skilled instructor to assist their smallest child on his first steps to growing into an English gentleman."
Looking at this advertisement, you might easily overlook the term "first-steps" as mere an expression.
However, it might be the most significant element of this unique position posting, as it attempts to find a tutor for a one-year-old.
Many of responses have now been received since the unnamed family advertised their call for the £180k-a-year tutor, who needs to be "a uniquely qualified person".
During the past few weeks, the advert has received attention across the media, with several wondering why?
Progressive Approach
The CEO, head and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is helping the family in their hunt, said that despite early skepticism, he found the idea "forward-looking", and "advanced".
When he spoke with the family, he mentioned they understood the unconventional nature of their request, and how immature their son is.
However, they explained that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to engage a tutor, as they had held off until their elder sibling was five, and by that point "cultural bias had by then set in".
What exactly does the family indicate by "cultural predisposition"?
It's "all-encompassing", he responded. "The way you eat, the manner you speak".
He explained the firstborn had adopted "extremely delicate, body language" from the family, and had assumed their cultural ways. The family informed Adam they did not want history to recur with their infant.
The plan: To engage a English tutor, who needs to speak with Received Pronunciation, to shape the baby right from the beginning.
Osmotic Learning
"A lot of the learning at the outset here is kind of osmotic," said Adam.
It's via this natural absorption that the family are hoping the child will acquire the UK customs they aim to impart.
He noted the tutor needed to be someone who went to "the appropriate educational institutions – comparable categories of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".
"The instructor simply needs to be the appropriate candidate, they'll be carrying out things they don't even know they're doing, just naturally," he commented.
Expense Not a Factor
The family explained to Adam the chosen tutor should preferably also have understanding of or interest in riding, alpine skiing, creative fields and instrumental training so as to influence the child in a diverse set of hobbies.
Furthermore though, he said the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a variety of courses so the child would be "pony-riding and learning an instrument by the time they are around three years old".
In the family's minds, guiding their son grow into a "English gentleman" will bring about accomplishment and create opportunities.
"Taking into account the rights and wrongs of that, because it's certainly a class statement," he notes.
But, notwithstanding all this guidance in "UK identity", would the child adopt so-called cultural leaning from the multicultural family he lives with regardless?
"Yes", answered Adam. "The parents know this may not work, but they've simply adopted the perspective of, 'we should try and let's go as soon as we can', because the price of it is not a concern," he stated.
Impractical
A number of in the tutoring industry who express similar doubts.
Another CEO, CEO and founder of an educational organization, who provides private tutors, wrote that "the process of adopting dual cultures, or actually, discovering oneself, is something that must be experienced personally, not designed."
He wrote that he had relocated from China to the UK at the age of 7 years old, and had been brought up knowing and embodying both cultures. He continued to be educated at a prestigious UK institution.
"The notion that a single person can function as a embodiment of Britishness, someone who can possibly impart the qualities of a UK sophisticate upon a infant child, seems to me naive and unfeasible," he wrote.
"Based on my background, engaging a quintessentially English tutor from babyhood will does not instantly achieve the goal they want.
"I did not have such a tutor, and yet I have been lucky enough to enjoy numerous of the situations they hope for their son."
He added: "The fact is, cultural identity cannot be imposed from the external environment; it must be embraced, and it must come from within."
Acquiring Englishness
Of course, Britishness is something Adam thinks can be instructed – and commercialized.
"In my view the reality that the world views us in this respect is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating
