No worries, man. And yeah, they DO shield alot of that stuff, because it's often not stuff one wants to be thinking of when implementing large-scale projects or more often, "trash projects" - one-time-use programs made for a specific purpose in a hurry.
Back to the original post, each should be learned, I think. Not only do the concepts exposed in each language make you a better coder, but you learn what you can use in different situations.
And of course, coding in the lower-level environments gives you an opportunity to learn the nitty-gritty stuff, as Dark_Coder mentioned.