Learning is a talent that many simply do not have. You are obviously correct in that a strong foundation of knowledge is innoculation against foolishness later in life.
If you collect enough facts in life, you build reference points that can be used to qualify new facts when you encounter them. Unfortunately, most people collect opinions and falsehoods along the way and consider them true because they rely on faith in authority as their epistimological methodology. It is true because a person or institution says it is true. They build their beliefs upon the sands of faith rather than the rock of science.
The desire to learn is no more incompatible with faith than, to follow the lead of your metaphor, the desire to build a strong structure for one's family to inhabit or the desire that one's family be healthy. None of us can learn everything, nor can we build a tornado-proof house or wipe out all infectious diseases -- but our "failure" due to our intrinsic limitations does not mean we should do nothing.
If a teacher can assist students in changing their attitude from "I can't do that" to "How do they do that?" then the teacher has led them a step in the right direction, or so it seems to me, as I think this means they will want to learn.