At the funeral of Gordon Tovey in 1974, the director general of education, Clarence Beeby read the eulogy.
He said Tovey had written previously: "Anyone who has known the joy of creating a thing of beauty, however humble, is never quite the same again; the world looks different to him because of what he has created".
Beeby said Tovey was "trying to say the unsayable, struggling with thoughts that lay beyond the capacity of mere words to express".
He continued that Pavlova, when asked what she meant by her interpretation of Swan Lake replied, "if I had been able to say it in words, do you think I should have gone to all the trouble of dancing it?".
This quote is the preface to a report from Auckland University and the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the University's Faculty of Education and Social Work, which says "our education system effectively stifles children's natural curiosity about the world".