Many educators don't think of attention as a learned skill, but rather as a kind of purchased commodity (Pay attention class!). Attention is much more than that. Emotional arousal and attentional focus are requisite gateways to learning. It's impossible to learn something that we're not attending to, and why would we attend to something that we don't consider important?

Further, many of the mental maladies that people confront throughout life, from an autistic beginning to an Alzheimer's ending, are attentional disorders at some level. Similarly, inattention leads to automobile accidents, classroom misbehavior, marital strife, and a whole lot more. The bottom line is that effective attention is central to a qualitative life.