When I was growing up in the Midwest in a family of four boys, one of my Mom’s goals was to develop an appreciation for “high” culture in her brood.  This was attempted through a variety of methods, including regular visits to classical music concerts, a book on fine dining manners, with staged tests at dinner time, and an emphasis on schooling and education with expectations that we would surpass her high school diploma achievement.  I’m not sure where she developed this vision, as she grew up on a farm in a cultural environment that most people today would consider on the lower end of the cultural skyscraper model.

The cultural skyscraper model views culture as being measured on a graduated scale, with “bad” culture inhabiting floors on the lowest levels of the skyscraper and “good” culture inhabiting the floors at the top of the skyscraper.  While we had a black and white television set, its use was mostly restricted to higher culture aspirations in our early days.  On Saturday nights, after our baths, we were introduced to Lawrence Welk’s musical show.  The music format could best be described as easy listening music from the big band era, at least as I remember it.  While it was on the lower end of the culture scale than what we usually listened to it was definitely more of a mid-range entry, especially when compared to media offerings that would be considered low culture today.

In general, my Mom distrusted the influence of mass media on her family.  “If everyone else jumps off a cliff, are you going to jump too?”, was a familiar refrain.  As I have grown older, I realize that media choices are never as black and white as they once seemed to me as a child, and yet I think that my Mom’s efforts to push us toward “high culture” media, forced a recognition that we should not become media “lemmings” and simply chose whatever mass media was being beamed at us that day.  As a parent today, the media choices are very different than when I was a child, but I still find my Mom’s prescription to always evaluate the media and choose wisely to be an important tool in my daily life.