- Either you do see the classroom as a conduit of knowledge from teachers to students. Indeed, that's not all there is to learning, you need to understand and exercise your new knowledge, but that happens in a different time, outside the classroom.
- Or you see knowledge transmission as a more or less autonomous task and you favor social interactions between students to help them "build understanding" as you suggest. In that case the teacher (and, arguably, the classroom) is not necessary anymore.
I fail to see why you would want a classroom and teacher if you are in the position 2.
I know something it is that if I were to pay for a class, I would want to have more than a bunch of people equally ignorant as I am trying to understand a thing together. I would want an experienced teacher giving us the core knowledges. But again, I mostly live in the IT world, where such a class is almost never necessary.