A widely recognized problem that physics teachers encounter is the difficulty that most students have when solving problems related to magnetic field line distributions in the presence of hard‐ and softmagnetic materials. Two causes of these difficulties are identified: (1) The fact that the hysteresis is introduced as the typical behavior of ferromagnetic materials; (2) the fact that the magnetic field strengthHis almost absent in the electromagnetism course. Proposals to remedy the student’s problems are (a) to introduce four idealized magnetic materials, i.e., unmagnetic, hardmagnetic, softmagnetic, and superconducting materials; and (b) to use the magnetic field strengthH, and not the magnetic inductionB, when discussing problems of magnetostatics.