Bunkai Training - Pointless or Pointful?

The level of incorrectness of the word "pointful" notwithstanding, there is a serious problem with bunkai training, and what it represents the entire karate community becoming.  Many self-ascribed self-defense "experts" teach bunkai as the be-all-end-all of self-defense, but I can't help but feel that this is more than just simply wrong.  It is my opinion that the current paradigm for teaching self-defense is, in fact, detrimental to the students and will do a fair job of putting the student into greater danger.

The current method for teaching bunkai is similar to the method for teaching ippon kumite: single attack and pause while the defender performs a multi-technique defensive maneuver on a static opponent.  How is this realistic in any way?  Not to say that there aren't any exceptions to this rule.  There are men like Andre Bertel Sensei in New Zealand who utilizes kata bunkai to teach oyo-kumite and Iain Abernathay Sensei in England that does a similar thing and uses more alive drills through bunkai application to teach effective self-defense.

What is the point of teaching bunkai then?  For most, as I said, it is a tool for teaching self-defense technique; which is to say, it's meant to teach technique in a situational method (ie. if the attacker does A, defender will do X).  By teaching in a situational manner, by deciding that each individual has a specific part to play makes this methodology a type of role playing, which I believe has its place, but it is not the penultimate step in self-defense.  Situational self-defense prepares students for specific situations, and not for violence, in general.  Self-defense is about teaching a person to deal with violence in a proper and effective manner.  The only way to do this effectively is through regular, hard-contact sparring and drilling.

I am of the opinion that bunkai, as currently taught, is largely useless.  It can be an exciting and fun mental and academic process and study into the history of the style, but for real use it has no utility.  I love Shotokan, and I believe the style has a lot to offer a student with regards to striking and dealing with an attacker that comes out swinging, but teaching a student to only defend that kind of attack in a bunkai setting can be dangerous.  By and large, it will be rare to see an aggressor attack with a perfect oi-zuki or mae-geri, or any other typical martial arts technique.

At the end of the day, the only effective method for teaching bunkai would be to incorporate it into free or semi-free sparring.  Have each side have the goal of utilizing specific chunks of kata within a sparring environment as opposed to within the contexts of a controlled one attack-one defense situation.

Those are my thoughts on bunkai as a whole, do you have a differing opinion?  Please comment!