The reason kids are made to do this stuff is so that they get real contact with tangible abstractions. Granted, it is not the best way to force this kind of th

The reason kids are made to do this stuff is so that they get real contact with tangible abstractions. Granted, it is not the best way to force this kind of thing down your throat, but from my own school experience they teach a kid "one orange", "two oranges" first, and then simply hammer them with problems. At no point do they explain the concept of numbers as an abstraction, as in "just one" and "just two". Kids don't get to internalize numbers, and all of what comes after, because it's all built on more complex abstractions from there on. Come to think, they don't even "get" the concept of "abstraction" in itself. The education system as of now (and 200 years ago) still brute-forces through this very basic thing, and many students just don't come through, which is to be expected.