This, then, is the purpose of narration—a purpose which we would do well to keep constantly before us. There should be no misconception. It is not a teacher’s device designed to find out if the child has completed a given task. It is not an act of verbal memory. It is a process which makes all the difference between a child knowing a thing and not knowing it. Narration is, indeed, like faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is the method whereby the child assimilates what he reads.

Stanley Boardman, from The Parents’ Review, Vol. 38, p. 469-475

No lesson is valuable which does not promote self-activity by making the child think, exercising its powers of narration or reproduction, or laying the ground-work for some future mental habit, making the idea given a well-spring of activity. We can judge, then, of the value of a lesson by the amount of work which it gives the children to do. There is, therefore, in a really good lesson only one place for the teacher, and that is the background.
Therefore, we teachers often have to pass a self-denying ordinance, and instead of showing off to our children how much we know, we take our children to the fountain-heads of knowledge and stand by in “masterly inactivity” while they drink.

Miss R.A. Pennethorne, from The Parents’ Review, Volume 10, p. 551-552