It is, but it depends on the size of the iteration and who is breaking it down as to whether or not it is useful.

I much prefer, "here is the problem, solve it," to "here is the problem and I'm going to tell you how to solve it, even though I have no idea how software development works."

Of course, the most recent "official scrum" environment I worked in was horrible. They really used it to micro-manage development. We actually created all the stories for a multi-year project so we could give an overall timeline (waterfall) to management, then the business dictated the order of the stories even when they made no sense. It was a constant battle.