Because they never did it for "prosperity". Prosperity came out as just a positive side effect of what they were doing. This is the problem with people in societies who never understood what knowledge or its quest really are. We see only the fruit of the knowledge. We only limit themselves to the application of that knowledge. Such is not the case with the people you referred to. Their quest for knowledge was genuinely a quest, and purely to satisfy their own singular self that they have discovered something new and understood abit more.
This concept by and large does not exist among Iranians (and many other nations). When such individuals apply themselves to prove for a thousandth time that the general relativity is true (or not), thinking about ways to detect gravitational waves, spending decades to perfect the technology and
finally detecting the gravitational wave, they are not doing it to make you "prosperous". Not at all. But if prosperity does come out of it (often it does), so much the better. But the original quest had nothing to do with prosperity.
I had told you before (did you forget again?!) that the current educational system in the world comes from
Greek gymnasium, a place where Greek men used to go for SELF improvement and to become individually LIBERATED from ignorance and that is why the curriculum there used to be called
Liberal Arts (which we still call it by the same name). Even the subjects which were being taught some 3000 years ago in Greek gymnasium are pretty much the same in schools nowadays.
The current knowledge and its diversification you see around yourself, took some 3000 years to be developed from almost nothingness to its current state. It is a monumental job. It has enabled a tiny organism on the face of a small planet around a below average size star to look up at the universe and understand it, choreograph it and about to predict its future.
You can theoretically put forward a proposition that the same could be done in 300 years if such and such and IF IF IF and IF had been done this way or that way. It won't matter from our perspective. Since we had no part in creation of this knowledge. Even if it had taken 30,000 years, we would come here 27,000 years later and put forward a proposition that it could have all been done in 3000 years. The important point to recognize here is your lack of contribution to this body of knowledge. It should not be if this all should have been done in past by "Them". That would be like an impotent man who can not get it up, but raises objection to a capable man about to get married at 31 years old: "why didn't you get married at 19? Now it is too late!".
That education system that you are seeing also was invented and perfected by "Them". It was not handed to them by anyone else. It is yet another tool they have invented to serve themselves and help them in their quest for knowledge.
With all due respect from bottom of my heart, I am still not sure if you understand what knowledge or its quest truly are.
Part of the
definition of an intellectual is to opine on diverse subjects related to the society, which are often not his/her expertise. This then allows a society to remain humane, instead of becoming a robotic assembly line, where no one knows (or does not even want to know), what is going on in the rest of world. This includes economy, military, culture and national capabilities. The extent to which this intellectualism is tolerated and is able to function without causing damage to society, shows the advanced nature of civility of that society and culture.
Iran ham natonesteh es sisad "boomi" ya jokeh sisado sizdah ro beh sar anjam beresoneh chonkeh dar Iran Losev vojod nadareh. When a president in US or a prime minister in UK, order something to be done, motma'en bash keh na tanha Losev-hai ona tavanayeh anjam in dastorha ro daran balkeh hata az in dastorha faratar ham miran va dar heyn anjam vazifeh char ta kashf va panja ta ekhtera digam rosh mikonan, keh deleh doktorhai vatani ma khonak sheh
Take this example. A couple of physicists in a Western company are tasked to build an antenna for microwave communication. When they build the antenna, there is this noise in microwave channel that does not go away and interferes with their communication. That is how they discover
residual microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang. These physicists were then awarded Noble prize in physics.
Inja raees jomhor dastor mideh migeh badbakhta mikhan maro bombaran konan mesleh Liby, bichareh mishim, berin yeh jangandeh dorost konin, Losev-hai ma kashf va ekhtera keh door, hata ba moghava natonestan maket 1:1 dorost konan. Rahbar mamlekat 7 saal pish dastor mideh migeh bichareha mikhan bezanan maro, berin yeh system defayi dorost konin. kashf va ekhtera keh cheh arz konam, raftan yeh chandta copy az systemhai daheh 60 dorost kardan va hanoz toyeh es sisad daheh 70 esh mondan.
Rahbar rosieh agar in dastor ro dadeh bood, ta alan Losev-hai roosi chand technology no' ham balash ekhtera kardeh bodan. Ageh rahbar amrika in dastor ro dadeh bood beh mellatesh ta alan Losev-hai amrikai chandta kashf dar physic, shimi, zist va riazi ham balayeh haftsad ta ekhtera royeh on system defayi mizashtan tahvileh rahbareshon midadan.