Yeah, sure, if we had been forced to continue remote teaching for a few more years, we'd probably still do it. But that's not exactly the definition of "earn it

Yeah, sure, if we had been forced to continue remote teaching for a few more years, we'd probably still do it. But that's not exactly the definition of "earn its place": if you do something just because the alternative that you'd rather like to do is not possible. Also it is not just about taste. Practically all scientific work investigating the large scale home schooling efforts concluded that it was far less effective than normal schooling in practically every measure, including tangential purposes of schools besides teaching, such as providing social context and stabilization and mitigation of socioeconomic differences.