Not sure how flying a plane while it's essentially doing nothing is helpful to anyone.

If anything airline pilots should be taught to troubleshoot a plane more and fly it less. Maybe if the First Officer understood the correct way to exit a high altitude stall and that applying inputs to his control cancelled out the other pilot's inputs the plane likely would not have crashed.

A big plane in a normal condition doesn't require much attention and can fly itself. Humans are best at exceptional circumstances (in theory) and computers best at doing the boring and tedious work.

Flight hours in this context are pretty meaningless, they should be judged by percentage of abnormal incidents survived in a simulator instead.