The experiment began in 1970 "with a simple premise: that any child has the innate capacity to become a genius in any chosen field, as long as education starts before their third birthday and they begin to specialise at six."[7] Polgár "battled Hungarian authorities for permission" to home-school the girls.[2][3] "We didn’t go to school, which was very unusual at the time," Judit recalled in 2008. "People would say, ‘The parents are destroying them, they have to work all day, they have no childhood’. I became defensive, and not very sociable."[8]