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"A family located in North London seeks an remarkable and experienced instructor to support their youngest child on his early path to becoming an English gentleman."

When reading this advertisement, you might easily miss the term "first-steps" as just an expression.

Yet, it may be the crucial aspect of this unusual position posting, as it seeks to recruit a teacher for a infant.

Numerous of applications have now been sent in since the unnamed family published their call for the £180k-a-year tutor, who has to be "someone very special".

Over the last few weeks, the advert has gained attention in the press, with numerous questioning why?

Progressive Approach

A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of an education consultancy, which is supporting the family in their search, stated that despite first doubt, he found the concept "visionary", and "advanced".

When he spoke with the family, he said they understood the unconventional aspect of their requirement, and how immature their son is.

Nevertheless, they explained that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to get a tutor, as they had held off until their elder sibling was five, and by that stage "cultural conditioning had by then set in".

What precisely does the family mean by "cultural bias"?

It's "comprehensive", he responded. "How you eat, the way you speak".

He said the elder child had absorbed "very nuanced, unspoken signals" from the family, and had taken on their cultural norms. The family told the consultant they hoped to prevent history to recur with their infant.

The intention: To hire a UK tutor, who must speak with standard English accent, to guide the baby from the very start.

Natural Absorption

"Much of the development at the beginning here is rather absorbed naturally," stated the expert.

It's via this subtle influence that the family are expecting the child will acquire the English characteristics they aim to cultivate.

He said the tutor had to be somebody who went to "the right kinds of schools – the same kinds of schools as the family aspire to send their son to".

"The instructor just has to be the appropriate candidate, they'll be performing things they don't even know they're doing, simply by nature," he added.

Money No Object

The family informed him the selected educator should preferably also have knowledge of or enthusiasm in riding, alpine skiing, the arts and instrumental training so as to influence the child in a wide range of interests.

Furthermore though, he said the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a range of classes so the child would be "pony-riding and picking up an tool by the time they are around three years old".

In the family's view, helping their son develop into a "English gentleman" will bring about accomplishment and create opportunities.

"For all the advantages and disadvantages of that, because it's undoubtedly a class statement," he comments.

However, in spite of all this instruction in "English culture", might the child absorb so-called cultural bias from the multicultural family he is raised by in any case?

"Certainly", said Adam. "The family realize this may not work, but they've merely embraced the attitude of, 'we should try and let's go as early as we can', because the price of it is not a concern," he said.

Idealistic and Unrealistic

There are some in the private teaching field who share these doubts.

Peter Cui, chief executive of a tutoring service, who also offer personal educators, wrote that "the development of becoming bicultural, or actually, forming one's identity, is something that must be grown into, not engineered."

The expert explained that he had moved from Asia to the UK at the time of seven, and had been brought up experiencing and living dual heritages. He progressed to be educated at Cambridge University.

"The idea that an individual can serve as a embodiment of English culture, an individual who can in some way transplant the qualities of a British gentleman upon a infant child, strikes me as optimistic and unfeasible," he wrote.

"Based on my background, having a typically English tutor from babyhood will not necessarily create the goal they want.

"I did not have such a tutor, and however I have been lucky enough to live many of the situations they hope for their son."

He added: "The truth is, personal identity should not be forced from the outside influences; it must be embraced, and it must be internally driven."

Acquiring Englishness

Naturally, English culture is something the CEO hopes can be taught – and marketed.

"I think the fact that the world holds us in this regard is something that we should be cherishing|valuing|appreciating