I went to Catholic high school myself, and (naturally) one of the themes in my education that kept popping up was that everything requires a certain degree of faith to accept. And really, that's true. Scientific theories are borne of induction, and at the end of the day when applying science you have to have faith that what has happened a million times will, indeed, happen the next time you observe the system. There is no guarantee. Furthermore, even logic forces you to presuppose axioms in order to get anywhere - ultimately, you must have faith that those suppositions are so basic and intuitive that they must be true. Still, the point of intellectual disciplines is to reduce that "faith" element as far as possible when presenting conclusions.
Because intellectual thought needs to aim to reduce this "faith" element when coming to conclusions, science education in secondary school (and all education, really) should focus more on using evidence to support conclusions. As it stands, science education until (and often up through) uni is mostly "accept these facts". And while I'd like for more scientific thinking to go on in secondary school for just the reason you described, the fact of the matter is that this just isn't the case. The theories taught in high school are, indeed, based off of collective observations and careful reasoning, but as far as the high schooler knows it's just another "fact" relayed from somebody they're supposed to have a good deal of "faith" in.
I think you're misunderstanding what 'faith' is. I agree that empirical induction is not logically sound and that the fact that they have held in the past does not necessarily imply that they will hold in the future, but logic does not require you to have faith in anything. Logic on its own does not tell you if something is true or not, it is merely a path from some statements that you assume to be true to some other statements that you can show to be true or false given the axioms are true.
If the axioms are false, the logical arguments still hold, but the implications are now irrelevant.
Science is an example of practical reasoning, primarily through the use of Occam's razor. Therefore each of the empirical explanations from scientific reason are
by definition the most likely explanations of a phenomena. This means that there is a reason to believe each of these scientific results. If there is a reason, then faith is no longer involved.
I definitely agree with you on how science is taught through high school and university, but this extends to nearly all subjects. Most of the education system (at least in Canada) is just memorization without justification.
And that's why it's scary that ID might be taught alongside evolution in biology classrooms. The high schoolers can't tell the difference, even though collective observations massively support one theory whereas the other hypothesis is not supported by evidence outside of "shit's complex, yo". Furthermore, ID merely serves to validate a pre-existing worldview without providing useful predictions about future observations, which makes it pointless as a scientific hypothesis even if it is "true."
Honestly, there are two completely separate issues. The first is that some people do not accept evolution because it conflicts with a personal belief of theirs. Who cares? So long as these people are not biologists, then that's fine. It makes absolutely no difference to me whether the farmer who grew my corn believes that the corn was sprung into being by a higher power or that the corn evolved from simpler organisms. The farmer's belief does not detrimentally affect anyone.
I'll respond to these two together as they effectively deal with the same issue: there is a practical side of the theory of evolution and there is a completely metaphysical side to it. The metaphysical side (origin of life, age of the planet, etc.) does not significantly affect any future decisions. The age of the planet does not determine which seeds a farmer will plant in his farm. On the other hand, the practical side of the theory does have significant applications for high school students, biologists and farmers alike.
Understanding the basic principles behind antibiotics could certainly be useful for students who have to take them, or for biologists who have to develop them. Understanding the processes that go into genetically engineering food could have a significant impact on how much food can be produced on a farm, the quality of that food, the potential health hazards it could pose, and its resilience to pesticides and the weather. Farmers who are unaware of the practical sides of evolution may end up making poor decisions that cost them a large portion of their harvest. Saying the farmer's belief does not affect anyone is naive.
The most important part of evolution is that it does provide useful predictions about future observations. Intelligent Design does not. This in turn implies the Evolution/Creationism debate can have some considerable policy applications. If there weren't any applications for it, then I'm not sure it would matter which one were taught in schools.
