lems of the nation, problems that continued into the
twenty-first century.
Further Reading
Caldas, Stephen J., and Carl L. Bankston III.Forced to
Fail: The Paradox of School Desegregation. New York:
Praeger, 2005. Examines the consequences of the
efforts to desegregate schools during the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Con-
tains case studies of school districts that include
developments in school desegregation around
the nation during the 1980’s and other decades.
Ravitch, Diane.Left Back: A Centur y of Failed School Re-
forms. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Critical
examination of attempts to reform American ed-
ucation that contrasts progressivist social ap-
proaches to education with more traditional aca-
demic approaches. The author was involved in
the back-to-basics efforts of the 1980’s.
Reese, William J.America’s Public Schools: From the
Common School to “No Child Left Behind.”Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. An excel-
lent general history of American public educa-
tion.
Carl L. Bankston III
See also Bennett, William; Bush, George H. W.;
Demographics of the United States; Drug Abuse Re-
sistance Education (D.A.R.E.); Education in Can-
ada; Magnet schools; Multiculturalism in education;
Nation at Risk, A; National Education Summit of
1989; Reagan, Ronald; School vouchers debate.
El Niño
The Event Occasional disruption of the normal
pattern of Pacific Ocean currents that disrupts
weather patterns, especially in the Western
Hemisphere
Date September, 1982-March, 1983
Place California, the Southwest, Hawaii, and the
Mississippi Valley in the United States; Peru;
Australia; and South Africa
The strong El Niño event of 1982-1983 caused severe
storms and flooding in the United States and other nations
with Pacific coasts. Americans alone suffered more than
two billion dollars in storm damage. For the first time, scien-
tists linked global climatic disasters to recurring tempera-
ture oscillations in the Pacific Ocean.
El Niño, a nickname for periodic aberrant weather
on America’s Pacific coast, first came into promi-
nence during the winter of 1982-1983, when a series
of storms devastated the coast of California, Hawaii
and U.S. Pacific territories were hit by cyclones, and
southwestern states and states along the Mississippi
River experienced massive flooding. The nickname,
which means “the boy” in Spanish, was an allusion to
the Christ child and was coined to refer to a warm
oceanic current that appeared around Christmas off
the coast of Peru at approximately four-year inter-
vals.
El Niño as a Climatological Phenomenon Begin-
ning in 1957, coordinated international collection
of oceanographic data showed that El Niño was
linked to the Southern Oscillation, a western Pacific
phenomenon. In most years, an area of low pressure
over Indonesia and North Australia brings high rain-
fall to that region. Moreover, under normal condi-
tions, high pressure over eastern Polynesia blesses
those islands with sunny, storm-free weather, and
both the winds and the surface oceanic currents of
the tropical Pacific move from east to west. During
the Southern Oscillation, pressure over Indonesia
rises, transpacific winds and currents weaken, and
currents off the coast of South America reverse di-
rection.
In strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
events, the pressure differential between Indonesia
and eastern Polynesia disappears. Winds and oce-
anic currents reverse direction, and the resulting cli-
matic effects are propagated outside the tropics. His-
torically, ENSO events have occurred approximately
once a decade. Strong El Niños in 1957-1958 and
1972-1973 generated international concern because
of their devastating effects on Peruvian fisheries.
Effects of the 1982-1983 El Niño The 1982-1983 El
Niño was the strongest on record. It began early in
Indonesia, in the spring of 1982. Some climatolo-
gists believe that the eruption of El Chinchón vol-
cano in Mexico, which spewed massive amounts of
dust into the atmosphere, intensified the event. Aus-
tralia, Indonesia, the Philippines, South India, and
South Africa all experienced severe droughts. Cy-
clones ripped through Hawaii and French Polyne-
sia, causing $280 million in damage. Warm ocean
temperatures damaged coral reefs. Ocean levels rose
by almost twenty inches in Peru and by eight inches
in California. In Ecuador and Peru, floods and land-The Eighties in America El Niño 315