I tend to agree with you, the burden of proof should be on the person or persons wishing to do such and such. However claims must be substantiated, regardless of what they are. And to be practical, we find ourselves in the situation where not only is institutional schooling normal, it is law with very real consequences if broken. The claims should be seen as something to be backed up not because harmless much be proven and so on, but because there are great many people still in need of convincing.

For the record I am not intending to give you a hard time, but to test the rigour of this because it is useless to me otherwise. My children are before school age and I'm very much considering the coming years where I will be forced to make a choice.

I'll read your old posts, I'm sure they will be interesting.