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"A family located in North London wants to find an extraordinary and skilled educator to guide their youngest child on his first steps to becoming an British gentleman."

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

But, it may be the crucial aspect of this unique employment listing, as it attempts to recruit a teacher for a 12-month-old.

Numerous of responses have already been received since the unnamed family advertised their call for the £180k-a-year tutor, who must be "an exceptional individual".

During the past few weeks, the advert has attracted interest across the press, with many wondering why?

Progressive Approach

A tutoring expert, CEO and founder of Tutors International, which is helping the family in their search, explained that despite early doubt, he viewed the plan "far sighted", and "advanced".

When he spoke with the family, he mentioned they appreciated the unconventional nature of their demand, and how young their son is.

Nevertheless, they stated that they "didn't want to wait any longer" to get a tutor, as they had postponed until their firstborn was five, and by that age "cultural influence had already taken hold".

But what did the family mean by "cultural bias"?

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

He explained the firstborn had absorbed "extremely delicate, unspoken signals" from the family, and had taken on their cultural habits. The family informed the consultant they did not want this pattern to happen again with their new baby.

The plan: To engage a UK tutor, who should speak with Received Pronunciation, to guide the baby from the very start.

Osmotic Learning

"A great deal of the development at the start here is rather absorbed naturally," stated Adam.

It's via this natural absorption that the family are expecting the child will pick up the English characteristics they aim to impart.

The consultant noted 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 tutor just has to be the right kind of person, they'll be performing things they may not realize they're doing, just naturally," he said.

Money No Object

The family informed Adam the selected educator should ideally also have familiarity of or enthusiasm in horse riding, winter sports, creative fields and instrumental training so as to shape the child in a broad spectrum of passions.

Additionally though, he said the family hoped the tutor to sign up the child on a selection of courses so the child would be "equestrian training and starting an instrument by the time they are around three years old".

In the family's minds, helping their son become a "UK sophisticate" will bring about accomplishment and provide access.

"For all the rights and wrongs of that, because it's undoubtedly a status symbol," he notes.

Yet, in spite of all this instruction in "Britishness", might the child pick up so-called cultural influence from the international family he lives with regardless?

"Absolutely", replied Adam. "They realize 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.

Impractical

There are some in the tutoring industry who share those concerns.

Peter Cui, CEO and founder of Blue Education, who supplies individual instructors, commented that "the process of adopting dual cultures, or actually, forming one's identity, is something that must be grown into, not engineered."

The expert wrote that he had relocated from China to the Britain at the age of seven, and had been raised understanding and practicing two backgrounds. He progressed to learn at Cambridge University.

"The concept that a single person can act as a embodiment of English culture, someone who can somehow transfer the attributes of a English gentleman upon a one-year-old child, strikes me as idealistic and impractical," he stated.

"Based on my background, engaging a quintessentially UK tutor from infancy will not automatically produce the goal they desire.

"I never had such a tutor, and yet I have been privileged enough to live several of the experiences they aspire for their son."

He stated: "The reality is, personal identity can not be forced from the outside influences; it must be selected, and it must come from within."

Acquiring Englishness

Of course, English culture is something the CEO believes can be educated – and sold.

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