In the wake of Santee, Calif., high school shootings, Cornell University professor James Garbarino’s Tuesday presentation on youth violence had extra

impact.

There has been a change in consciousness about violence in recent years, Garbarino said, in what he referred to as a national “owning up” to violence. Now that violence has hit home in suburban settings, more people have started to feel that the issue affects them.

“People all over the country feel connected to youth violence, though, when they felt protected by class and race, they didn’t,” he said.

Garbarino, co-director of the Family Life Development Center at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y., has authored several books including “Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them.”

“We need to go beyond this American inclination to just act, and to think more clearly,” he said.

Garbarino’s presentation was part of a conference on violence and early care in school settings, with about 200 people in the audience. The conference was funded by anonymous donors, conference chairwoman Juletta Patrick said.

Patrick, assistant to the dean of the college of education for recruitment and retention, explained the purpose of the conference.

“My goal is to identify the issues and provide strategies in how to deal with violent situations in schools,” she said.

Garbarino focused on the problem of solving major problems with simple solutions throughout the presentation.

Research shows that behaviors are not just a result of simple cause and effect, but the context must be considered. Garbarino used the trend of mentoring as an example.

“Mentoring has swept the country as the solution to everything,” he said. “Does it work? The answer, not surprisingly, is it depends.”

Violence in young people is not easily explained by one cause, Garbarino said, but it is a result of a build-up of risk factors, such as abuse in the home, exposure to racism, drug use and large family size.

The average child thrives in an environment with no or very few risk factors, but as those factors increase, so does the potential for behavioral problems, he said, likening the balance of risk factors to juggling tennis balls.

“The average kid can handle two,” he said. “The average kid can’t handle four.”

Risk factors can be balanced to an extent by assets, such as reading, the arts and spirituality, Garbarino said. Assets can be found outside of the home, in the cultural climate of the community and in school.

The ability to delay gratification is one of the building blocks of emotional intelligence, Garbarino said. In one study, preschoolers who were able to make themselves wait to eat a marshmallow obtained higher SAT scores years later.

“Adolescence is the crystallization of childhood experience,” he said.

People show continuity in mood and behavior from childhood to adulthood, he added. Many depressed teens tended to be sad children, and aggressive children often become violent teens.

Garbarino said children at risk of becoming violent tend to have an extensive repertoire of aggressive behavior.

“They have one tool — hitting,” he said. “It’s like they have a road map, and it only has one direction on it — aggression.”

Garbarino said there are burdens placed on young people that put them at risk of developing violent behavior, such as the “weight of carrying around traditional masculinity.”

Culture tells males “it is much better to be mad than sad,” he said.

Other major points included that boys are more likely to break down than girls and that racism also weighs in as a risk factor.

“We forget that in our sort of ‘have a nice day’ society,” Garbarino said.