Malmo, you and oldsteeplestud are both steadfastly refusing to see the point here. As long as doing hurdle form work doesn't interfere with your regular distance training, it definitely can't hurt. I was at the Olympic Trials for the men's and women's steeple, and the thing I noticed was that everyone in the race had excellent form and all hurdled the barrier without slowing down at all. That should tell us something. Every coach I've ever talked to about the steeple (and it's been quite a few, at both the high school and college level) say something along the lines of "minimize the difference the hurdles make" or "get over them smoothly and maintain momentum."
Look at it this way. I view the purpose of my hurdle work as getting accustomed to adjusting steps as a you approach a barrier, so that you get to it smoothly and in stride. This allows you to lose little to no momentum as you go over it. If you screw up, you slow down considerably to get to the right point in your stride (stutter step) and then have to reaccelerate when you clear it. Slowing down and then speeding up again requires much more energy than maintaining a pace. Therefore hitting a barrier at the right point in your stride requires less energy than coming to it at the wrong point in your stride. Therefore, practicing approaching hurdles makes a runner much more efficient in the steeplechase. Imagine trying to run a 5k where, every 75 meters or so, you temporarily slow down considerably, then reaccelerate to your former pace. You would wear out quickly and would not run near as fast as you're actually capable of. This is the same principle.
Just because both of you were successful internationally does not mean that you know all the answers. One American Olympian once remarked that he only trained 3 or 4 days a week; the ones that trained 6 or 7 days a week were the ones who were going to lose. Clearly the fact that he was internationally competitive did not automatically make his training advice the greatest thing to come out of anyone's mouth.