Yes; improvisation should be taught more, but learning and deconstructing pieces by other people is an excellent way of doing it, in the same way that learning

Yes; improvisation should be taught more, but learning and deconstructing pieces by other people is an excellent way of doing it, in the same way that learning a language is often best done by listening and deconstructing what native speakers have said and written. The key difference is that we should be encouraging people to learn and /understand/ pieces written by others, rather than just blindly learn the notes.