A common refrain in education at every level is simple: pay attention. Hidden within this practical command is a transcendent truth: that, as Simone Weil stated, “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity” and the precursor to love.

As advances in technology have monetized attention, there can be a temptation for the conversation to focus on distraction and devices, missing the deeper call to practices fundamental to human flourishing.

But there is also a movement within higher education to become a prophetic voice at this critical moment. For instance, the Franco Family Institute for the Liberal Arts at Notre Dame declared “attention” the research theme for the year, and is hosting a symposium in April with leading artists and thinkers on the theme “How Should We Hold Attention?”

Similarly, the Educating for the Virtues of Attention (EVA) initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is asking what it would mean to educate not just with attention, but for attention itself. EVA is a three-year, campus-wide initiative led by philosopher Michael Vazquez that aims to respond to what he calls a widely recognized “crisis of attention” while refusing to frame the problem only in negative terms.

“The most pithy way to put it is that it’s a campus-wide effort to combat the crisis of attention,” Vazquez explains. “But in reality there is a positive vision behind it: that attention is the very stuff of human experience, and that to attend to reality, to attend to what’s true, or good, or beautiful, is an important part of human flourishing and living a good life.”

In both its curricular and co-curricular interventions, EVA focuses on three virtues that, while not exhaustive of the potential virtues of attention, capture its core substance. These are patience, reality orientation, and ‘just’ attention (attention that is just).

Patience, Vazquez says, is “the habit of staying with difficult or unsettled questions—not rushing to closure.” In an information environment that rewards speed, certainty, and hot takes, patience becomes countercultural. 

Reality orientation names the disposition to see the world as it actually is, even when doing so challenges one’s assumptions or desires. Drawing on Iris Murdoch, Vazquez describes this as a kind of “unselfing”—learning to look outward rather than filtering everything through the ego. 

And ‘just’ attention refers to the moral quality of how we attend to others: fairly, charitably, and without distortion.

“These aren’t just academic ideals,” Vazquez emphasizes. “They matter for democratic life. They matter for interpersonal life. And they matter for learning.”

This vision is reflected in EVA’s design. Curricularly, the project is embedded in UNC’s required first-year course, College Thriving, which explicitly focuses on helping students flourish not only academically but as whole human beings. 

EVA also convenes interdisciplinary faculty communities of practice, bringing together instructors from the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields to examine how attention functions in their disciplines and classrooms, and to potentially integrate attention oriented practices and activities into their courses. 

But much of EVA’s energy unfolds outside the classroom. The project partners with campus institutions like the art museum, planetarium, botanical gardens, libraries, and performing arts programs to create co- and extracurricular experiences that invite students into tech-free, communal practices of attention. These are not framed as remedial or austere. 

“We make it fun, we make it interesting,” Vazquez says. “And as it turns out, if you build it, they will come.” So far, attendance has consistently exceeded capacity.

Looking ahead, EVA plans to deepen student engagement through fellowships and leadership opportunities, empowering students themselves to become ambassadors of attentional culture. At the same time, the project is developing assessment tools and pedagogical resources that can be shared beyond UNC.

What emerges from EVA is not a nostalgic retreat from modern life, but a deliberate effort to reclaim something essential. In an age where attention is increasingly mined, monetized, and manipulated, educating for its virtues may be one of higher education’s most urgent, and hopeful, tasks.

EVA is supported by a grant from the Educating Character Initiative at Wake Forest University.