Assume that your sample contains only two realizations. I guess an intuitive measure of dispersion would be the average absolute deviation (AAD)
AAD=12(|x1−x¯|+|x2−x¯|)=...=|x1−x2|2
So we would want other measures of dispersion at the same level of units of measurement to be "close" to the above.
The sample variance is defined as
σ2=12[(x1−x¯)2+(x2−x¯)2]=12[(x1−x22)2+(x2−x12)2]
=12[(x1−x2)24+(x1−x2)24]=12(x1−x2)22
=12⋅|x1−x2|22
To return to the original units of measurement, if we did as the student wondered/suggested,we would obtain the measure, call it q
q≡12⋅|x1−x2|22−−−−−−−−−√=12|x1−x2|2–√=12–√AAD<AAD
i.e. we would have "downplayed" the "intuitive" measure of dispersion, while if we have considered the standard deviation as defined,
SD≡σ2−−√=|x1−x2|2=AAD
Since we want to "stay as close as possible" to the intuitive measure, we should use SD.
ADDENDUM
Let's consider now a sample of size n We have
n⋅AAD=∑i=1n|xi−x¯|
and
n⋅Var(X)=∑i=1n(xi−x¯)2=∑i=1n|xi−x¯|2
we can write the right-hand side of the variance expression as
∑i=1n|xi−x¯|2=(∑i=1n|xi−x¯|)2−∑j≠i|xi−x¯||xj−x¯|
=(n⋅AAD)2−∑j≠i|xi−x¯||xj−x¯|
Then the dispersion measure qn will be
qn≡1n[n2⋅AAD2−∑j≠i|xi−x¯||xj−x¯|]1/2
=[AAD2−1n2∑j≠i|xi−x¯||xj−x¯|]1/2
Now think informally: note that ∑j≠i|xi−x¯||xj−x¯| contains n2−n terms, and so divided by n2 will left us with "one term in the second power". But also "one term in the 2nd power" is what we have in AAD2: this is a primitive way to "sense" why qn will tend to zero as n grows large. On the other hand the Standard Deviation as defined would be
SD≡1n−−√[n2⋅AAD2−∑j≠i|xi−x¯||xj−x¯|]1/2
=[n⋅AAD2−1n∑j≠i|xi−x¯||xj−x¯|]1/2
Continuing are informal thinking, the first term gives us n "terms in the 2nd power", while the second term gives us n−1 "terms in the second power" . So we will be left eventually with one such term, as n grows large, and then we will take its square root.
This does not mean that the Standard Deviation as defined will equal the Average Absolute Deviation in general (it doesn't), but it does show that it is suitably defined so as to be "on a par" with it for any n, as well as for the case when n→∞.