Dr. Fred DiUlus, online university builder and one of the nation's early online education pioneers claims that  COVID19 has created the newest OXYMORON - 'Traditional Education'.

Dr. DiUlus states that two months ago a mad scramble to transform traditional classroom learning into online learning disemboweled existing education systems in America. Teachers were yanked from their classrooms while students from 1st grade through college were shifted without recourse, options and few exceptions to follow what their schools dictated - the strange new world of 100% online education. 

K-12 kids were dumped into the lap of parents and a cadre of teachers – 90% or more of whom had no idea how to teach online spiraled into the transference from classrooms to online portals reluctantly to the bewilderment of overwhelmed parents and confused children. Teachers were expected to become online education experts in two weeks. When asked how well did that go? DiUlus said "It was chaotic, an absolute disaster." College kids attending classes were sent home-classes terminated until later. "Later" was not defined. The online classes that may have existed were not taught in most instances by the same ground based Profs. Confusion, indecision, tuition and dorm reimbursements along with fall admissions were all found floating in the air.

On the other hand, frustrated K-12 teachers around the country DiUlus observed threw up their hands and many gave A's to their students and declared the school term over. Others marched valiantly on while talking to empty computers as students from grade school to high school skipped classes and avoided contact with their teachers to seek out fellow classmates as often as an opportunity to stray away from being online presented itself.. 

The nightmarish hell created by school officials at all levels DiUlus suggests was the end product of little or no experience by the "bosses" with online education methodology, how it should be undertaken and what worked well. The choices made by most except the most experienced colleges with online methodology and pedagogy was the worst possible substitute for effective and recognized, high standard quality online education – K-12 administrators picked a conferencing software best suited for family and friends recently on Mother's Day, not effective and valuable online education.  

DiUlus exposed the deteriorating scenarios nationally as it was unfolding on his Twitter feed @BestWorstOnline and laid bare the fact there is no such thing as a "teach 'em online" quick-fix that can be scooped up and launched to make the online teaching transition, more effective. To be effective he says requires the online education presentation to be respected and proven. Without proper training and the acquisition of process knowledge, grade school teachers and college professors would have had to voluntarily learn how to be effective online educators before being thrown to the wolves by their administrators.

Universal Competency Standards for online teaching at the K-12 level are nonexistent. Perhaps this crisis will bring home to all that one way to fix that image and the process PDQ is to set in place K-12 Competency Standards that are both universal and include requirements of emerging new technology that can be used effectively in and out of the classroom. The purpose is to keep kids in school, learning, at all times, and on schedule. College professors beat to a different drummer, most unwilling and knowledgeably inept on how to teach online so properly they demand compensation to clone their own courses and learn how to do it in order to offer and teach their exact same courses online.

The field of primary education particularly has failed to keep up with the latest online learning technologies and the colleges that teach and certify our future K-12 educators are themselves stuck in a time warp, one dictated by out-of-touch bureaucrats and higher education leaders who grew up on tradition not Disney-like Imagineering. Education at the lower levels is a professional field stuck in the past, clinging to outdated classroom based pedagogy and otherwise being, bit by bit, destroyed and victimized by what DiUlus states is today's latest Oxymoron -"Traditional Education".

The late Peter Drucker, a futurist guru and Father of modern management offered 30 years ago that within a generation education as we know it would be replaced by "cyber" education.

"We've arrived" DiUlus says, "right on schedule."