TOURO COLLEGE
New York School of Career and Applied Studies
Syllabus
Department: Sociology
Course Title: Youth and Urban Community
Course Number: GSO 230
Prerequisites: GSO 121
Credit Hours: 3
Developer: Abbott Katz
Date of Last Update: December, 2003
Course Description
Impact of the home, school, and community on the growth and development of youth in
urban areas; special youth problems including youth underachievement, unemployment,
delinquency, and youth crime, teenage pregnancies, and mental health problems.
Course/Departmental Objectives
 To understand how the sociological analysis of youth departs from journalistic
accounts
 To compare the youth experience across ethnicities
 To consider “Culture of Poverty” theories of urban youth behavior in light of
explanatory alternatives
Course Institutional Objectives
To foster a richer understanding and appreciation of our students’ own milieu and a
respect for the circumstances of others, and to work towards more harmonious
relationships between different groups, particularly in the greater New York metropolitan
community; to enhance critical thinking and foster communication skills.
Content
Introduction – Defining the populations to be studied; distinguishing between “decent”
and “street” categories.
Chapter 1 – Elaborating through interviews and case histories the “decent” and “street”
characterizations. The culture of poverty.
Chapter 2 – Campaigning for respect; internalizing the code; and elaboration of “staging
areas” (compare to the early definition of the term in the book).
Chapter 3 – Drugs, Violence and Street Crime. Sociological theories about crime.
Midterm Exam
Chapter 4 – The Mating Game. Street courtship. How does this relate, if at all, to the
code? Street family structure.
Chapter 5 – The Decent Daddy
Chapter 6 – The Black Inner-City Grandmother in Transition
Chapter 7 – John Turner’s Story
Conclusion – The Conversion of a Role Model: Looking for Mr. Johnson
Final Exam
Additional distributed readings:
 Asian-American Gangs (http://www.asian-nation.org/gangs.shtml)
 Excerpts from G. Suttles, The Social Structure of the Slum
 Excerpts from Martin Sanchez-Jankowsi, Islands in the Street (a multi-ethnic
ethnography of gangs)
Course Requirements
 Regular prompt attendance
 Midterm and final
Grading Guidelines
 Midterm
 Final
 Class participation
40%
40%
20%
Methodology
 Lecture and class discussion
 Essay exams
Course Text
Anderson, Elijah, Code of the Street, W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London,
1999
Bibliography
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2003.
Casella, Ronnie, “Being Down”: Challenging Violence in Urban Schools foreword by
Jean Anyon, New York: Teachers College Press, 2001
Freedman, Marc. The Kindness Of Strangers : Adult Mentors, Urban Youth, And The
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Jankowski, Martín Sánchez, Islands in the street : Gangs And American Urban Society,
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