The problem of how best to capture, direct, and enhance children's abilities to pay attention has been a central feature of educational thought and practices over a long duration. And, while having students pay attention in class has been a concern of teachers across the ages, beginning in the Enlightenment we find a significant shift in educational literature and practice where the child's attention appears less and less as a simple passing reference and is no longer merely seen as an aid to instruction but becomes central to numerous educational projects. This article examines the educational writings of John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), and Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) as a tactic for illuminating the categories that were embedded in theory and practice around the child's attention in the "long" eighteenth century. These three popular advice-giving writers allow us to track changes and continuities in pedagogic conceptualisations of children's attentiveness. The article's examination of pedagogic theory shows us how consequential educational inequalities can be produced at an epistemic level, in the educational knowledge that identifies children and their potentialities as learners. (Contains 41 footnotes.)