She Unnames Them...

[Tom Moritz]

The original question was about teaching 8-14 year-old children...
and we should be teaching about names -- their variability and the
human process of naming as well as teaching the essential skills of
biological observation and analysis.

Having said that...

Ursula (Kroeber) Le Guin (no stranger to museums) has
translated the eighth of Rilke's Duino Elegies beginning:

    "With all its gaze the animal
     sees openness.  Only our eyes are
     as if reversed, set like traps
     all around its free forthgoing.
     What is outside, we know from the face
     of the animal only;
     for we turn even the youngest child
     around and force it to see all forms
     backwards, not the openness
     so deep in the beast's gaze...


See also, her story "She Unnames Them" (in Ursula K. Le Guin Buffalo Gals
and Other Animal Presences -- available in paperback).

Tom Moritz