Imagine students going to school with gene chips, which contain their entire genome, and asking teachers to analyse their genes and impart education that best suits their genetic make-up.

This genetic revolution can happen “within all of our lifetimes”, says Dr Howard Gardner, father of the theory of multiple intelligences. The day is not far when young students will tell teachers: “These are the genes that are inactive, these are the ones that are working — teach me effectively.” Dr Gardner, one of the most influential educators of modern times, told this correspondent that his “images of the future” include mega cities, machines that think and carry out tasks that used to be done by humans, and virtual realities like Second Life. Elaborating on Second Life, he said people can learn lot of things through virtual reality including how to perform surgeries, dissect animals and fly an aeroplane.

The Harvard University professor was in the city on Friday as part of his India tour aimed at reshaping the Indian education system, which he believes will need at least 50 years to be fully reformed. His visit to India is sponsored by iDiscoveri and Soma Educational Trust. Dr Gardner has revolutionised the concept of education and learning through his theory of multiple intelligences, which challenges the basic notion that there is only one standard kind of human intelligence.

According to him, there are at least eight intelligences including verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalist. He argues that since there are different kinds of intelligences, different children learn differently. He argues that intelligence cannot be quantified and a person’s intelligence cannot be judged by the marks he or she gets in a traditional examination. “If a child is doing well, do not test him,” Gardner points out.