Can innovation be taught?

This article by Tony Wagner in the Wall Street Journal, titled "Educating the Next Steve Jobs" echoes exactly  my key concerns about traditional education, in particular that it puts too high a price on failure, is too subject-focused (rather than experience-focused), and treats grades as the main end. A few excellent quotes from the article:

In most high-school and college classes, failure is penalized. But without trial and error, there is no innovation...Students gain lasting self-confidence not by being protected from failure but by learning that they can survive it. 

Learning in most conventional education settings is a passive experience: The students listen. But at the most innovative schools, classes are "hands-on," and students are creators, not mere consumers. They acquire skills and knowledge while solving a problem, creating a product or generating a new understanding.

In conventional schools, students learn so that they can get good grades. My most important research finding is that young innovators are intrinsically motivated. The culture of learning in programs that excel at educating for innovation emphasize what I call the three P's—play, passion and purpose. The play is discovery-based learning that leads young people to find and pursue a passion, which evolves, over time, into a deeper sense of purpose. 

Creating new lab schools around the country and training more teachers to innovate will take time. Meanwhile, what the parents of future innovators do matters enormously. My interviews with parents of today's innovators revealed some fascinating patterns. They valued having their children pursue a genuine passion above their getting straight As, and they talked about the importance of "giving back." As their children matured, they also encouraged them to take risks and learn from mistakes. There is much that all of us stand to learn from them.