I'm struck by the very insightful analogy between thematic narrativist games and classroom role-playing. It strikes me as spot-on, though with a major limitation. I'll get to that in a minute, but I just wanted to mention that, strangely enough, this insight means that narrativist games tap into an earlier stratum of RPG design that predates D&D and other RPGs-as-entertainment. I've recently learned that the term 'role-playing game' itself was apparently first used in education, some years before D&D arrived on the scene. And political scientists were using 'role-playing' exercises, and calling them that, on college campuses as far back as the 40s.
All of which means very little, but I like the irony of Forgite games being the 'old stuff' or inspired by the old stuff. Traditional gaming grognards get to be the newfangled innovators.
Now for that limitation. I agree with Warthur about the shallowness of some RP exercises used in the classroom, when they are ways to get students to explore implicit moral questions, like the balloon game. On the other hand, RP exercises can be very useful when they are used to explore how the different parts of a fairly complex social structure or institution inter-relate and interact. This sort of thing can be easier to grasp by seeing it 'in motion' with people playing the roles of various actors in the situation. These RP exercises aren't anything like narrativist gaming, though--they are explicitly aimed at modeling or simulation.
But that's a little off topic, I guess.