ABSTRACT
On her way into school one day, five year old Harriet asked her mother: ‘Why are there three gates into school and we only use this one? Her mother explained that there had been a girls’ entrance, a boys’ entrance and an infants’ entrance. She showed Harriet the words over each gate and the date, 1870, set in the brickwork. Harriet was intrigued that in the olden days, boys, girls and infants would have used different gates. She began to understand that the school had been there a long time, that other children had used that gate many years ago just as she did now, and that some things in the past were different. Thus Harriet was engaging in some of the processes and skills of history: asking questions about visual evidence of the past in the world about her. She was also beginning to develop an understanding that the school had existed before she did, showing embryonic notions of time and change.
