ABSTRACT
In the movie Billy Madison, the title character, played by Adam Sandler, has to return to school as an adult and repeat his school years, one week for each grade, to prove to his father that he’s worthy to take over the family business. Billy does fine in kindergarten. He sails through his week in first grade, and on to the second. But in just half a minute in the third grade, Billy panics: “Multiplication! This is where it gets really hard.” Billy is onto something. Although abstract thinking is more a function of secondary education, along about third grade, we do expect kids to begin breaking away from concrete thinking and toward abstract representational thinking.
