Schooling is meant especially for brahmanas; previously there was no question of schooling for ksatriyas, vaisyas or sudras. Ksatriyas used to learn the technology of warfare, and vaisyas learned business from their fathers or other businessmen; they were not meant to study the Vedas. At present, however, everyone goes to school, and everyone is given the same type of education, although no one knows what the result will be. The result, however, is most unsatisfactory, as we have seen in the Western countries especially. The United States has vast educational institutions where everyone is allowed to receive an education, but the result is that most students become like hippies.

Higher education is not meant for everyone. Only selected individuals trained in brahminical culture should be allowed to pursue a higher education. Educational institutions should not aim to teach technology, for a technologist cannot properly be called educated. A technologist is a sudra; only one who studies the Vedas may properly be called a learned man (pandita). The duty of a brahmana is to become learned in the Vedic literature and teach the Vedic knowledge to other brahmanas. In our Krsna consciousness movement we are simply teaching our students to become fit brahmanas and Vaisnavas. In our school at Dallas, the students are learning English and Sanskrit, and through these two languages they are studying all our books, such as Srimad-Bhagavatam, Bhagavad-gita As It Is and The Nectar of Devotion. It is a mistake to educate every student as a technologist. There must be a group of students who become brahmanas. Without brahmanas who study the Vedic literature, human society will be entirely chaotic.

From Srila Prabhupada’s purport to Cc Adi 17.253