Many, many times through out history knowledge and education have been destroyed to prop up some group that want to rule.

Better chance it's the reverse, civilized societies end up educating people.

I think it's both, in a virtuous cycle:

Educated people make societies more civilized, and they in turn invest to educate more people.

Unless there's a catastrophe. In that case all bets are off.

Yeah it's a bit of both but there's quite some societies which were educated and turned uncivilized or where you have an educated elite that's not really civilized/interested in civilising. Meanwhile pretty much all civilized populations end up educating people,I don't think I've seen a counter example.

It's a lot easier to educate a decent portion of society than create a society that's civilized as a whole. And I think the latter is more important for keeping things running long term which is grim.

The counterpoint to this is that early 20th century Germany was one of the most advanced, sophisticated, and educated countries in the world.

In fact the genocide only stopped when a bunch of unsophisticated American (and Russian) farmboys rolled in.

> was one of the most advanced, sophisticated, and educated countries in the world

It was also an economic disaster. Surely that contributed.

WWI was the cataclysm that destroyed the global economy.

(Its aftermath was a necessary transition, that happened to be disastrously mismanaged.)

The current proponents of new "realism" who claim that regional empires will co-exist in peace would do well to study the causes of WWI.