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.
I agree that at the high school level, turning on curiosity is more important than memorizing facts. Not all of my fellow evilutionists agree with me, but I think that kids finding out that biology is exciting and unfinished offsets the possibility that some will conclude that it is evil.
It just depends on how the teacher presents the conflict. I think it it is between those who argue that unanswered questions are proof they are unanswerable, and those that see them as career opportunities. There are Nobel prizes to be won in research, but not likely any to be won in trying to define science in state legislatures.