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"Parents based in north London is looking for an extraordinary and experienced educator to guide their most junior child on his early path to growing into an English gentleman."

When reading this listing, you might easily overlook the term "first-steps" as just a turn of phrase.

But, it may be the most significant element of this unusual employment listing, as it aims to recruit a teacher for a 12-month-old.

Hundreds of responses have now been submitted since the unidentified family advertised their request for the £180,000 per year tutor, who has to be "an exceptional individual".

Over the last few weeks, the listing has received attention in the press, with numerous questioning why?

Forward-Thinking Method

The CEO, head and founder of a global tutoring firm, which is supporting the family in their search, explained that despite early skepticism, he considered the plan "forward-looking", and "advanced".

When he met the family, he said they understood the unusual character of their demand, and how immature their son is.

Nevertheless, they stated that they "were unwilling to delay any longer" to hire a tutor, as they had held off until their elder sibling was five, and by that point "cultural influence had already set in".

What precisely does the family refer to by "cultural leaning"?

It's "everything", the expert replied. "How you eat, the manner you speak".

He said the elder child had adopted "extremely delicate, non-verbal cues" from the family, and had taken on their cultural ways. The family explained to him they wished to avoid this pattern to repeat itself with their infant.

The intention: To bring in a UK tutor, who needs to speak with standard English accent, to influence the baby from the very start.

Natural Absorption

"A lot of the education at the outset here is somewhat acquired indirectly," stated Adam.

It's via this osmosis that the family are hoping the child will adopt the English characteristics they wish to impart.

Adam said the tutor had to be somebody who attended "the right kinds of schools – comparable categories of schools as the family plan to send their son to".

"The instructor must be the suitable individual, they'll be carrying out things they aren't even aware they're doing, just naturally," he added.

Expense Not a Factor

The family explained to Adam the successful candidate should ideally also have familiarity of or passion in horse riding, winter sports, creative fields and music so as to shape the child in a broad spectrum of passions.

More than that though, he explained the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a variety of courses so the child would be "pony-riding and picking up an musical instrument by the time they are about three years old".

In the family's minds, helping their son grow into a "English gentleman" will bring about success and provide access.

"Taking into account the pros and cons of that, because it's definitely a status symbol," he adds.

But, in spite of all this guidance in "English culture", might the child pick up alleged cultural influence from the multicultural family he resides with regardless?

"Certainly", said the CEO. "The parents know this could fail, but they've just taken the perspective of, 'let's give it a go and we should start as early as we can', because the price of it is irrelevant," he stated.

Impractical

Several in the private teaching field who express these concerns.

An education leader, head and founder of an educational organization, who also offer individual instructors, wrote that "the journey of becoming bicultural, or actually, discovering oneself, is something that must be lived into, not designed."

The expert wrote that he had emigrated from Asia to the Britain at the time of 7 years old, and had been brought up experiencing and practicing dual heritages. He progressed to learn at the University of Cambridge.

"The idea that an individual can function as a representation of Britishness, someone who can possibly transplant the attributes of a UK sophisticate onto a one-year-old child, strikes me as idealistic and impractical," he wrote.

"From my perspective, having a distinctly UK tutor from babyhood will not instantly achieve the result they hope for.

"I never had that kind of mentor, and however I have been lucky enough to experience many of the situations they hope for their son."

He continued: "The fact is, cultural identity can not be dictated from the outside; it must be embraced, and it must come from within."

Acquiring Englishness

Naturally, UK identity is something Adam believes can be taught – and commercialized.

"I think the reality that the international society regards us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating