When the education offered to a group is substandard, most of the group's ideas are moldy.

The only way to keep any group, let alone a majority, in subjugation is through a combination of physical oppression and enforced ignorance. The US Supreme Court recognized that enforced ignorance belongs to oppression's toolkit when it struck down the legal concept of "separate but equal" in education. South Africa under apartheid was nothing if not an example of separation, in education, experience and opportunity.

People can't run their communities using concepts and methods that they were previously only sketchily informed of and not allowed to practice. Hence the stumbling and the false starts. People don't know how to make it work yet. They are practicing.

This will, incidentally, be the major challenge for Iraqis as well, once the shooting and bombing stop.