"So I am not surprised that people become enamored of ideologies that bypass the evidence collection stage and simply announce their conclusions to willing ears."
I couldn't agree more. I think it is very important to show students HOW something became to be accepted. Stress the scientific method and explain how testing evidence works. Don't just throw a book in front of students and have them read basically someone's opinion. Teach them how to perform the tests themselves, then maybe they would really learn about science.
In my high school that was what we did in ninth grade. However, it's a difficult concept, and I took a long time to understand the ramifications.
What a good idea...maybe we should also have them make up the rules of grammar and musical notation and formal mathematics for themselves. Obviously, anything it took our best minds 400 years of painstaking labor to produce ought to be easy enough to duplicate in a secondary school in a few class hours.