Education, yes, but time and resource has to be balanced under currently dominating economic pressure
During a visual descent in the real aircraft the crew were directed by ATC to join the circuit downwind. F/O was PNF. To the surprise of the captain and a qualified observer in the jump seat, the PF turned base far too soon with the result the aircraft was so high on final that a go-around had to be made.
Later the F/O explained that despite 1000 hours on type he had never done circuits and landings in the simulator and certainly never given the practice at entering the circuit on the downwind leg. But he had done well over a hundred ILS on the autopilot in the simulator and lots of one engine inop go-arounds and numerous multiple emergencies during LOFT exercises as well as no shortage of taxiing, another hundred holding patterns on automatics and LNAV but NEVER a circuit or a 35 knot crosswind landing.
All of these were regulatory box ticking exercises during the cyclic training regime. And all he wanted to do was to increase his pure flying skills by manual flying a few circuits without any automatics preferably in a crosswind. But the syllabus did not allow for that..
There surely must be a lesson here for the trainers as almost certainly this disregard of practice manual flying in the simulator is widespread in favour of heads down button pressing and autopilot`monitoring`.