The "component-based" syllabus makes more sense than the alternative (and is more like the International syllabus). I'm not a pro, but a local pro with many years of teaching experience has begun to teach that way. His pitch is that he's trying to teach people to dance, not to memorize patterns.
I saw an example of what can (sort of) go wrong with the choreography-based approach recently. (The names of syllabus publishers and pros are left out to protect the guilty.) I wanted to "clean up" a Silver Cha-Cha pattern I had been taught, and was able to find a YouTube video of pros teaching that very pattern (a come-on to induce people to buy the complete instructional video). In my search I also found another video, made by the same company, of different pros teaching a pattern with the identical name but some major differences--possibly a newer version of the pattern. So which is the "right" one?
The moral of the story, as I see it, is that every dance figure was made up by somebody. So why not make up your own?