"Or this: How did Indigenous cultures in the Americas learn to ride horses? How did European cultures learn to use canoes?"

Only a particular type of FN learned to ride horses, because it allowed them to adapt even better to their existing way of life, not transform it into a modern, agricultural, industrial way of life, and it could be done easily without a whole structure of educational institutions, as widespread literacy required.

Same with Europeans using canoe, only a few did, when it was useful, and it does not take years of sitting still and focusing on little characters on a piece of paper.

Learning to become literate, and educated, takes human children years of disciplined effort and attention, learning to sit still on chairs for long periods, etc. We have trouble getting our own kids to do it! Education in the 19th and early 20th century did not use Montessori methods.

Of course it is even more difficult for kids used to roaming free in nature, etc.