well speaking as a member of "the current crop of newbie students"
I think that the aim of the XC exercise is to get yourself and the plane from A to B to C safely
Believe it or not this exercise can cause some of us a high level of anxiety and ANYTHING that help banish that anxiety and instill some confidence is a worthwhile exercise.
I know some of you experts may find this difficult to believe but some of us actually have issues map reading and find relating what is visually in front of us in terms of what is printed on the chart problematic.
So I'm going to disagree, there are skills that can be learned on the ground, using the methods I've mentioned above. You can train yourself to see exactly what that size highway looks like from the air, the fact that those powerlines can be Id from the gaps cut in the trees even if you can't see the lines themselves.
I envy those of you who think that nav is easy.