The Words We Use for "Schoolchildren"

So already, recently I have noticed several educators and elected officials using the word "scholars" instead of "students" when talking about the children they teach or set policy for in their schools and districts. 

Last Monday morning, the Boston Globe published a coronavirus-related opinion piece co-written by several members of local school committees.* It persuasively and constructively critiqued Massachusetts' not-yet-final plans for the re-opening of its public schools in September, while acknowledging the educational and social-emotional costs of keeping school doors closed, especially for some student groups. As a former Cambridge Rindge and Latin School teacher, I read the piece with special interest and enthusiasm because of my great respect and affection for two of its authors, one a CRLS graduate and the other a current CRLS history teacher.

I thought this group of school committee members got it just right and summarized it elegantly and forcefully in their concluding paragraph:  

"Our school communities deserve better than compromise in search of normalcy. They deserve real leadership and robust action in place of vague directives and abdication of responsibility. They deserve a plan that carries its own weight instead of setting it on the shoulders of underfunded, overworked school districts. Until that plan exists, we will speak — as educators and as elected officials — in defense of the students and staff in our schools."**

But what momentarily--just momentarily--distracted me from their arguments was a word in the following sentence: "We also lack what we need to plan for the educational attainment of our scholars, especially those with disabilities, those who are learning English, and those who live in poverty."** 

Several questions occurred to me as I realized "scholars" was being used as a synonym for "students":

• Had a special subset of students in our schools been designated as scholars according to some set of criteria? 
• Could and should first graders be called scholars? 
• What do we, adult educators and officials, mean by the term "scholars"--and do we have a common understanding of it? 
• How do the students in our schools understand the word "scholars," especially when hearing it applied to themselves?
• Is the term "scholars" considered preferable to the term "students" for some reason? (This might be a question I'd have the answer to if I were still teaching.)

Students? Scholars? Both?

I know: it may sound like I'm overthinking this. But just to say that when I see the term "scholars" used to describe schoolchildren ranging in age from 4 to 18, I have to wonder if it's more an aspirational term than a descriptive one. I worry when when we educators label children as something that they are not yet in order to motivate them to become that thing: in the absence of our contextualizing and discussing our deliberate use of a particular label and our transparently shepherding students toward the goal designated by it, we may inadvertently cause them to think they've already achieved that goal. More about this important topic later, since our students are all entitled to educations that make it possible for them to become scholars.

My questions sent me first to the Oxford Online Dictionary*** to understand the difference between "student" and "scholar." One Oxford archaic definition of "scholar" was "A person who is highly educated or has an aptitude for study"; another was "A student or pupil."*** Since these two definitions didn't quite overlap from my perspective, I now had some new questions:

• Are "student" and "scholar" synonyms?
• What does it mean "to study"? What kinds of learning come from studying and what kinds do not? Can scholars learn from something other than studying--for example, from playing, as many little children do?
• Are "pupil" and "student" synonyms? And therefore, by extension is "pupil" a synonym for "scholar"? Have these words become synonyms, or were they always?

At this point, I realized I better start consulting the Online Etymological Dictionary****--and I wished I'd studied Latin as well as French. But there was that word "studied" again: I had to think back to all those times I'd planted myself in front of a book or something else and tried to fill my brain with certain facts and constructs in hopes of being able to apply them in the service of knowing and doing later. Surely that wasn't the only way to learn, but it was one of the ways to learn.

So here's what I found out about "student," "scholar," and "pupil":

Scholar:  

'Old English scolere "student," from Medieval Latin scholaris, noun use of Late Latin scholaris "of a school," from Latin schola (see school (n.1)). Greek scholastes meant "one who lives at ease." The Medieval Latin word was widely borrowed (Old French escoler, French écolier, Old High German scuolari, German Schüler). The modern English word might be a Middle English reborrowing from French. Fowler points out that in British English it typically has been restricted to those who attend a school on a scholarship.'****

Student: 

'late 14c., from Old French estudiant "student, scholar, one who is studying" (Modern French étudiant), noun use of past participle of estudiier, from Medieval Latin studiare "to study," from Latin studium (see study (v.)). An Old English word for it was leorningcild "student, disciple." Student-teacher of a teacher in training working in a classroom is from 1851, American English.'****

Pupil:

'"student," late 14c., originally "orphan child, ward," from Old French pupille (14c.) and directly from Latin pupillus (fem. pupilla) "orphan child, ward, minor," diminutive of pupus "boy" (fem. pupa "girl"), probably related to puer "child," probably from a suffixed form of PIE root *pau- (1) "few, little." Meaning "disciple, student" first recorded 1560s. Related: Pupillary.'****

The following thoughts arose for me from these etymologies:

The 2016 Kimbrough Scholars

• If "scholars" is a word we choose to use simply to mean "children of all ages learning in schools," our decision can be justified by the above etymologies. However, if we choose to use it only as a synonym for "students," we may undervalue its potential to motivate students to become scholars--and we do want them to become novice or apprentice scholars as a result of their K-12 journeys. 

That means we too need "real leadership and robust action in place of vague directives." And if those are already there, please let me know. Only with the support of parents and the community, and with strong curricular leadership in place, will K-12 educators be able to support all students in developing the inquiry, literacy, and performance skills; the senses of self; the habits of mind; the work ethic and commitment; the interpersonal communication skills; and the flexible knowledge that purposeful scholarship requires. Furthermore, the district will have to ensure that students have sufficient and varied authentic opportunities to further develop as scholars. The CRLS Kimbrough Scholars Program provided such an opportunity for a group of students for several years.

• Given the "leorningcild" part of the etymology of "student," there's a sense that those who are students can learn from others who already have the knowledge and skill they are in the process of developing. So there is a place for listening and learning from adults. Though much classroom education has rightfully empowered and encouraged students to express themselves, to make their voices and truths heard, the students in those classrooms, in the name of scholarship and mutual understanding, must engage others' perspectives, voices, and truths.
  

• The "'orphan child, ward" part of the the etymology of "pupil," took me aback.***** From it, I grasped the feeling of expulsion from home that might accompany the home-to-school transition of our youngest schoolchildren--and understood that learners definitively become "pupils" when school is the place they do their learning, under the supervision of people who aren't family members. Several of my elementary teacher colleagues refer to their students as "my babies"--I'm guessing this comforts their very young students who are much experiencing themselves as "pupils"--hopefully in far more cheerful classrooms than the one depicted here.

So what should we call schoolchildren when we aren't calling them "schoolchildren"? I'm going to recommend we call them "students", not "scholars." Aspiration is terribly important for both teachers and students. But aspiration without teeth--aspirations without plans and methods for realizing aspiration--won't amount to scholarship. Students always know when the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

So what can we do to help our students merit being called "scholars"? 

First, we can move away from curriculum that emphasizes student skills at the expense of other educational areas. The framework offered by Gholdy Muhammad in Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy ******  focuses on four areas:

• "Identity Development—Helping youth to make sense of themselves and others
• Skill Development— Developing proficiencies across the academic disciplines
• Intellectual Development—Gaining knowledge and becoming smarter
• Criticality—Learning and developing the ability to read texts (including print and social contexts) to understand power, equity, and anti-oppression"*******

Please note that skills development is only one component of this framework that also insists that students be supported

• to explore and understand the self-of-the-moment each of them brings to any kind of inquiry into themselves, others, the worlds closest to them, and the worlds farthest from them; 
• to recognize, develop, and pursue the knowledge that's important, meaningful, and interesting to them; and
• to sharpen their capacities to recognize forces, behaviors, and dynamics that do or could threaten their and others' abilities to live free, empowered, and respected--so they can respond effectively for the sakes of themselves and others.

Skills may be essential for scholarship, but they're not sufficient for scholarship.

Second, we can create assessment tools and opportunities that encourage and reward student persistence, growth, inquiry, reflection, performance, and risk. One possibility might be student portfolios built over students' secondary careers in which they represent those moments and experiences that they and their parents, teachers, and mentors recognize and associate with their successful development of their scholarly capacities.

So yes, let's call our students "scholars"--but only when they understand that their learning behaviors have earned them that designation. It's a perilous moment for sure as we wait to see how much of our students' learning lives will need to be online. And, of course, I know there's much more important stuff to worry about than the distinctions that I'm drawing here. Still, however the school year plays out, we owe it to our students to be as honest with them as we are encouraging and optimistic.

I have a friend who always introduces me as a "singer" because I've sung in choral groups throughout my life. I am a very respectable amateur singer, but I always correct her, explaining to those present,"I sing, but I'm really not a singer." Frankly, I don't work hard enough at singing in an ongoing, disciplined way to call myself a singer--which isn't to say that I don't work at it at all. I want to reserve terms like "singer" and "scholar" for those who really do the hard, dedicated work I associate with both, and with the wonderful results I also associate with both. When we educators call our students scholars, I want them to glow with a sense of achievement and growth that both they and we recognize and applaud.

* Screen shot of web page version of Wilson, A., Read, L., Lipsett, A., Foss, C., Young, R., & Mosca, L. (2020, July 20). The plan to reopen Mass. schools compromises too much and provides too little. Boston Globe. Retrieved from https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/20/opinion/plan-reopen-mass-schools-compromises-too-much-provides-too-little/
** Wilson, A., Read, L., Lipsett, A., Foss, C., Young, R., & Mosca, L. (2020, July 20). The plan to reopen Mass. schools compromises too much and provides too little. Boston Globe. Retrieved from https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/20/opinion/plan-reopen-mass-schools-compromises-too-much-provides-too-little/
*** Oxford lexicographers. (2020). Definitions, meanings, synonyms, and grammar by Oxford dictionary on Lexico.com. Retrieved July 26, 2020, from https://www.lexico.com/

**** Harper, D. (2020). Online etymology dictionary: ORIGIN, history and meaning of English words. Retrieved July 26, 2020, from https://www.etymonline.com/ 
***** Photo from the New York Public Library included in the following blog:

McCarthy, E. (2016, January 7). 11 Ways School Was Different in the 1800s [Web log post]. Retrieved July 26, 2020, from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/58705/11-ways-school-was-different-1800s  

****** You can listen to her Muhammad discuss this framework in this video entitled "Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of Our Schools."
******* These words are quoted directly from the Amazon web site.

Rampage

When Coronavirus met Heat Wave,
It was love at first sight,
Bonnie and Clyde-style--
Life cheap, compassion nil.

Daytimes,
They’d joyride around town,
Honking their horn, jeering,
Flaunting the heat they packed,
Testing the patience
Of those waiting for testing
In idling cars in sunbaked lines.

Nighttimes,
Consuming and consumed,
Drunk on the day’s gains
In death and despair,
They’d couple feverishly,
Breaking old bedframes
And new records.

They needed stopping. 

So we marched and masked,

Demanded, tasked.  

But we had no leverage.

There was no deal to be cut:

Those who’d paved their 

     ways
Were above the law,
And we knew it.*

* This poem was revised on July 27, 2020, after I considered some comments and questions offered by a discerning poetry reader who's also a good friend. It's former title was "Rampage: A Pandemic Poem;" its third stanza formerly began with the following three lines: "They needed stopping./ We had the will and the means,/ But not the leverage."

Photos:

"Bonnie and Clyde in March 1933 in a photo found by police at an abandoned hideout": Photo accompanying Bonnie and Clyde. (2020, July 16). Retrieved July 17, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_and_Clyde#/media/File:Bonnieclyde_f.jpg 

"Cars line up to enter SeaWorld as it reopens, on June 11, in Orlando, Fla. The park had been closed since mid-March to stop the spread of the coronavirus."  Photo by John Raoux/AP accompanying Allen, G. (2020, June 16). Florida Officials Spar Over Rising COVID-19 Cases. Retrieved July 17, 2020, from https://www.wbur.org/npr/878932911/florida-officials-spar-over-rising-covid-19-cases

The Trees That Bind

So already, I think lots of us have trees that we love, that we look forward to seeing, even go out of our ways to see. Every time I drive up to the Eustis Estate Museum, which is on my way to and from my parents' senior living community, I always spend some time looking at the tree that's right next to the house.

 












As this smaller picture of my mother standing next to it in 2017 attests, it's a tree to be taken seriously. Its trunk resembles the leg and foot of a mega-elephant. If anything happened to it, I doubt I'd be the only one who missed it. 

I think that in the time of coronavirus, it's especially reassuring to see such trees, to be reminded of what endures, even to see it enduring. But trees are living things, subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as well as the natural journey through life to death. And so we sometimes experience losing them, depending on when we encounter them.

A few weeks back, a good friend who's a current Jamaica Plain resident and my frequent socially distanced walking partner suggested that we walk through the Moss Hill Road neighborhood where I grew up. So we did. I pointed out to her the home of one of my childhood friends who'd had the best toys of anyone I knew because her father worked for Mattel. Aleta had every Barbie outfit and accessory, and her mother let us eat the kinds of candy my mother refused to buy because, she said, it would rot our teeth.

"Spring Tree #1" by Scott Ketcham*

Even better than Aleta's toys was the immense, towering tree in her backyard--her house was one of at least four that backed up to it. We'd play under its ground-scraping branches for hours. I loved that tree so much that I went looking for it one afternoon about twenty years ago while I was working at English High School: above Aleta's old house, I spied a dead treetop that I thought might have belonged to that tree. A few weeks ago, there was not even a dead tree top, so I had to believe that that tree was now truly gone. As I had twenty years ago, I wondered if my childhood perspective had made it seem larger and more spectacular than it really had been.

Too Young to Play "Under the Tree" Without Supervision

That's why I was thrilled that when I told my younger sister that I'd been on Moss Hill Road recently, she immediately asked, "Do you remember the tree behind Aleta's house---the one that had the branches that went down to the ground, so that when you were under it, it was like you were in a room?" Suddenly, I got that tree back; by sharing her similar memory of it, Lauren had ensured that at least between us, that tree would always be.

During the American Academy of Poets' late April #ShelterInPoems Virtual Reading, Rita Dove read (at minute 22:02) and commented on (at minute 23:45) Joanna Klink's "On Falling (Blue Spruce)." It's about a tree, a nearly hundred-year-old blue spruce next to Klink's house in Montana, that fell one night in a storm. It was a big loss for Klink: as she explained in the blurb next to the poem on the poets.org web site, "We bought the house because of the spruce."

Klink's poem quietly simmers with so much feeling that we're forced to recollect our own grief as she grieves. The poem begins with a meditation on the ordinariness of falling in nature: the falling of dusk, of needles, of pine cones that, in her case, "dropped every hour/ on my porch, a constant// irritation." But, to be irritated by things and people, we know, is not not to love them, is not not to count on their presence in our lives. So we understand that the realization of ordinariness will not protect us from feeling loss, especially the loss of what or whom we've chosen.

"Green Sifted" **

While Klink talks about not being able to understand how alteration of such magnitude could have transpired so suddenly--

. .  .. Every day
of my life now I cannot
understand. The force

of dual winds lifting
ninety years of stillness
as if it were nothing, . . ..

I experience her as seeking not to feel the overwhelming grief that she's feeling. But she's no less angry at the situation than she is at herself for being surprised by it: the tree had the audacity to fall "Before it was possible/ to imagine my life/ without it."

Is it too late to come to terms with the loss? In some ways, yes, but really not.

• There's the wisdom accrued: "What is beyond/ task and future sits right// before us, endlessly/ worthy."  
• There's the sense of what can't and shouldn't be replicated: the speaker plants a small linden tree in a different place since "Some change/ is too great."  
• And finally, there's a tree like the blue spruce in a field somewhere "made entirely of/ hovering" that, thanks to this poem's vivid portrayal of it, Rita Dove explains, reassures us that

"our memories, our sense of where we are in a moment, and how we felt in that moment, can never be taken away from us. They exist inside of us, maybe existing entirely as hovering, and yet they are there, in that field, that white and quiet field."

Rita Dove's complete comments about Klink's poem and pandemic times generally are well worth listening to; her poem in the current issue of the New Yorker is well worth reading.

I hope and believe that writing "On Falling (Blue Spruce)" comforted Klink and that reading it, having it to go back to and read again, comforts not only her, but also her neighbors. As she further explains on Academy of American Poets web site,

" . . .  [the blue spruce] rose above all the other trees in this area of town, and had its roots underneath a corner where people paused to talk.  After it fell, in a windstorm so violent that fires broke out across Missoula, I received more than a hundred notes at my door—a few people wanting to work with the wood in a way that was equal to the tree, but most expressing grief. Even now, six months later, strangers will stop me to say, 'It was something.'"

Some things that belong to most or none of us legally, actually belong to many of us in some way. This is true of the doum tree in Tayeb Salih's "The doum tree of Wad Hamid":  "So it is, my son, that there is not a man or woman, young or old, who dreams at night without seeing the doum tree of Wad Hamid at some point in the dream" (8).***

My sister Lauren and I are now planning a trip to our old neighborhood: we need to look one more time for our childhood tree. If we need to explain to the current owners of the nearby houses why we're standing in their yards, we will. Interestingly, Lauren, who has vivid memories of the tree's smooth, grayish bark, believes that it was the same kind of tree as the one outside the Eustis House: a copper beech. Maybe we'll discover that I was wrong, that our childhood tree is still there, standing broad and exult. Or maybe we'll find ourselves in the presence of a tree "made entirely of/ hovering."

* https://www.scottketcham.com/post/119541798937
** https://www.scottketcham.com/image/158869712282 

***  "The doum tree of Wad Hamid" in Ṣāliḥ, A. (1994). The wedding of Zein and other stories (D. Johnson-Davies & I. E. Salahi, Trans.). Three Continents Press.

Where We Set Our Tables

So already, recently I've been thinking back to my June 2012 visit to the then tallest building in Shanghai, the Shanghai World Financial Center. 

Thanks to the thick, transparent glass panels that make up much of the floor of its hundredth-floor observation deck, visitors can look not only out across Shanghai in all directions, but also straight down to ground-level Shanghai spreading directly beneath their feet. The deck's many reflecting surfaces further intensify the surreal viewing experience, since visitors are always needing to figure out if they're seeing other people or other people's reflections.

Frankly, I didn't mind the wavy weirdness and uncertainty created by reflections of reflections. But those glass floor panels terrified me. I did all I could to avoid standing with "nothing" between me and the street 1,555 feet below me. 

So I was unnerved and fascinated by one couple's choice to claim one of those thick floor windows as their family's lunch spot. Comfortably seated on "nothing," they turned their attention from their cellphones and guidebooks and began setting out food, plates, and utensils. Meanwhile their pig-tailed daughter played, crawled, sat, and inspected the meal taking shape, utterly oblivious to the conspicuous drop to the street beneath her. The seeming precariousness of the place must have captivated the couple, though it had the exact opposite effect on me. Then again, I'm the kind of person who prefers floors that admit no view of the ground I know to be somewhere not far beneath them.

So why think of this Shanghai visit right now? First of all, when we're in the midst of global pandemic and precariousness, it's hard not to think of previous experiences that messed with our senses of safety and reality. There's no question that the coronavirus pulled the rug out from under all of us earlier this year. But now that the novelty of our absent rugs has worn off, many of us are beginning to wonder if maybe our floors are missing, too.

Second of all, a couple of months back, I heard Kay Ryan's poem "The Niagara River" (at minute 19:25) during the American Academy of Poets' #ShelterInPoems Virtual Reading. Immediately that family picnic on that Shanghai observation deck appeared before my mind's eye--and then stayed with me.

The narrator of Ryan's brief, pithy, provocative poem recounts the experience of a "we"--I think it's also family on sightseeing outing--eating lunch at a table set on the deck of a boat traveling down the Niagara River. As the group is eating and chatting atop what doesn't quite seem to qualify as a floor--"As though/ the river were/ a floor, we position/ our tables and chairs/ upon it, eat, and/ have conversation"--the shoreside views change "calmly as though/ dining room paintings/ were being replaced."

Now the Niagara River is not a river to mess with. "Mighty" is one word I feel comfortable using to describe it: with its width, speed, and magnificent falls, it does impress with its force and power. During my search for a photo* that conveyed its mightiness, I came across numerous stories of human triumph and tragedy, some the result of daring and others the result of fortunate and unfortunate ignorance. 

But the river--especially a river like the Niagara--isn't a floor; we can flow with it, let it carry, push, hurl, or drag us, but we can't plant ourselves on it and stand firmly "in place," much as we may choose words and images that cast it in familiar, relatable, taming terms.

Not that our efforts always succeed. In this case, what's certain--so certain that Ryan's narrator twice says "we do know"--is that beneath them is not some floor, but the Niagara River. What's not known--actually, "what is hard to remember"--which means what was once known--is "what that means." So reports the narrator, dispassionately stating the fact of that missing memory as naturally as the river passes the painting-like landscapes on its shores.  

I've had a few friends whose conversations with me seldom reflected what we were doing or experiencing at the moment. For example, we could have rounded a corner in a museum exhibition and encountered El Greco's "Laocoön"** at relatively close range, and they would have said something like, "How's your cousin liking her new house?"

So I do understand that there are lots of people who just keep talking and eating, even when they're in the midst of a potentially significant experience like cruising down a magnificent river. Ryan's narrator would be one of those, except that he/she/they does remember that there's something he/she/they doesn't remember. There's a sense of ancestors here somewhere, a sense of stories once told and of meaning assigned, even if they can't be recollected.

Interestingly, throughout the whole of the #ShelterInPoems Virtual Reading, there are a number of tables, most notably kitchen tables, where people are eating--and at which they're making some kind of meaning.

• There's the old couple having their usual dinner at their usual table who keep "Remembering, with twinklings and twinges" in Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Bean Eaters" (read by Marilyn Chin at minute 17:25).
• There's the kitchen table at which "children are given instructions on what it means to be human," where "We make men . . ., we make women," in Joy Harjo's "Perhaps the World Ends Here" (read by Richard Blanco at minute 35:55).
• There are the multiple kitchen tables at which the crucial "figuring-it-out" has happened that has made it possible for us to feel ourselves "walking forward" in "today's sharp sparkle" in Elizabeth Alexander's "Praise Song for the Day," written for Barack Obama's first inauguration (read by Amanda Gorman at minute 49:40).

The Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of the United States

Interestingly, all of these poems are about remembering, whether the memories belong solely to those sitting at the table or to a larger group of people--members of the same family, cultural group, organization or institution. The facts and meanings of those memories have come through storytelling in its many forms across time and place, as solid as the tables around which they're shared.

I know: it's not fair to compare a dining table cruising down a major river one afternoon to a kitchen table sitting solidly and dependably in the middle of a room that anchors a family and household through thick and thin. But travels far from home next to another major river were what inspired Langston Hughes to speak of rivers to himself--and to understand himself in connection to those who came before him. And Kay Ryan's narrator has plenty of mindfulness, even if "the meaning" is eluding him/her/them. Here's my quatrain summary of what her narrator is mindful of:

A floor unlike a floor.
A shore unlike a shore.
The river's name is sure--
But more recalled no more.

Perhaps mindfulness can put a floor beneath our feet, especially when the rug's been pulled out from under us, and we're struggling to maintain our balance. Or maybe even just the glimmer of memory can steady us. The bottom line is that some floors simply don't seem like floors--like the one of the observation deck in the Shanghai World Financial Center--which doesn't mean they aren't floors.

Megan Fernandes' poem "Shanghai" in this week's New Yorker brought back to me another Shanghai memory: an evening cruise down the "wild and holy" Huangpu River."***


Shanghai is a city of stunning artifice. A few of my photos captured the view as I saw it. But most of them resembled impressionistic paintings more than photos, given how my camera compensated for the way the increasing haze,  human-made and natural, diffused the evening light. 

There's something about those "distorted" photos that seem more right and real to me than the "accurate" ones: as Fernandes says of the city a few lines later, "That is the trick of this city. It looks like a weird hope,/ the human species struck by a wondrous asymmetry."*** 

Today, I am sitting far from Shanghai at my very solid kitchen table where I spend the bulk of my time during this pandemic. My table is standing on my equally solid hardwood floor. But I still often feel off-kilter: who doesn't these days? And the truth is that I'm on the third floor, and beneath me is not the ground, but two more floors upon each of which is probably set a table in the exact same place as mine. "Weird hope" may be the best we can do some days. Meanwhile the rivers flow on.

* Toda, W. (2019, July 9). A general view of the Niagara River and Horseshoe Falls in Niagara Falls, Canada. In City News. Retrieved from https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/07/09/man-swept-over-niagara-falls/ (Originally photographed 2017, July 15)

** Theotokópoulos, D. (n.d.). Laocoön [Painting found in National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.]. Retrieved July 4, 2020, from https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/el-greco-laocoon.html [El Greco is the more common name for Theotokópoulos. This photograph lops off some of the top of the painting.]
*** Fernandes, M. (2020, June 29). Shangai. The New Yorker. Retrieved July 5, 2020, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/shanghai