I think that pointers are hard is self fulfilling prophecy. We studied them in the 9th grade. Because nobody bothered to tell us they were hard almost my whole class - around 80% after the first two lessons groked pointers and linked lists.

Same was with pointer arithmetic and function pointers.

Right now I am struggling mightily with monads mostly because the voice in my head tells me the thing all of the internet is singing - they are hard don't bother.