‘90s FAMILY : Boy Trouble : Low self-esteem. Bias. Emotional problems. Sounds like the obstacles girls face in the classroom, right? Well, some experts say it’s the young men who are losing out.

Ken, 17, believed he had no choice but to belch loudly during a “mushy” classroom discussion on betrayed love, as depicted in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.”

“I had to do something ‘cause I was starting to freak,” said Ken, remembering the “dumb day” last year in an English class at a Westside high school. “All that talk about love and feelings and commitment makes me feel weird, like I’m talking about something private. . . . That’s why I feel like I had to interrupt.”

Despite the teacher’s public reprimand, detention and ultimately a bad grade, Ken said the burp was worth it. “School don’t do me much good anyway.”

Ken’s attitude worries some educators, counselors and academics, who believe it illustrates the sorry state of boys in the classroom. Neglect and unfair treatment, they say, damage the education of boys in elementary and secondary schools in California and nationwide.

Two reports, released by the American Assn. of University Women in 1991 and 1992, have produced countless discussions and media stories about classroom bias against female students and the plummeting of teen-age girls’ self-esteem.

And while few will completely dismiss girls’ struggles, a handful of experts and forthcoming books argue that in recent years, girls have received too much attention and boys not enough.

“Boys are believed to have the educational opportunities” at the expense of girls, said Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education and a senior research scholar at New York University. “But many boys--boys of all (ethnic and economic) backgrounds--are angry and in trouble. Not many have connected this to the facts.”

Facts, according to Ravitch and the U.S. Department of Education, such as: more adult men than women lack a high school diploma; young men have lower educational aspirations; boys consistently earn lower report card grades; they get in more trouble at school.

Young men also bring into the classroom emotional problems from outside the school fences, stemming from being what some have called “an endangered species.”

Recent U.S. Department of Justice figures, for example, reveal that high school boys are four times more likely than girls to be murdered; they are more prone to abuse alcohol or drugs; boys 12 to 15 run double the risk faced by girls of becoming victims of a violent crime, and 82% of the nation’s incarcerated youths 18 and under are male--a percentage that increases to an estimated 95% for adult men.

“Obviously, this hurts boys’ academic performance and chance for success in life,” said Thomas Glennon, a psychologist in Studio City and a consultant for a North Hollywood center for troubled youths. “I see many boys who have such a low self-esteem and tremendous amounts of anger. A lot can’t handle life.”

Statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that male California youths, ages 15 to 24, are four times more likely to commit suicide than girls in the same age group. But teen-age girls unsuccessfully attempt suicide about as often as teen-age boys, CDC epidemiologist Robin Ikeda said.

“Boys have everything stacked against them,” said Lawrence Beymer, a counseling professor at Indiana State University and author of “Meeting the Guidance and Counseling Needs of Boys,” published by the American Counseling Assn. in September. “The schools don’t seem to notice. Everyone always seems to talk about the poor little girls with low self-esteem. Well that’s screwy.”

What’s even more discouraging, said Larry Schryver, is that most people acknowledge boys’ problems only when they are tied to their ethnicity, such as the high homicide rate among young African American men. Schryver is director of Camp Afflerbaugh, a Los Angeles County probation facility in La Verne, which houses about 115 male juvenile offenders between the ages of 16 and 18.

“People tend to view boys’ problems as something that can be solved only with punishment. With girls, there’s a feeling that they can be rehabilitated,” said Schryver, pointing out that boys occupy 17 of the county’s 18 probation centers. “This gives boys the idea that they don’t matter, that they don’t exist.”

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Ian McCann, 15, said he feels confident about his personality and academic abilities. But the Fullerton High School student added: “Many of the guys I see (in classes) seem unmotivated, especially in English. They’re usually timid and unsure of themselves. But the girls I see are very confident and very much able to succeed.”

In Woodbridge, Va., a scheduling quirk placed only boys in Jean Ellerbe’s ninth-grade English class last year. “At first, it was a mess,” she said. “They were at-risk students who had reading difficulties and they looked like the type of boys who got in trouble.”

But then Ellerbe tailored the curriculum to pique the boys’ interest in the Vietnam and Gulf wars. Reading tests given to her 20 students at the beginning and end of the year showed the boys collectively boosting their scores 2.7 grade levels. “I don’t think they would have been nearly as successful if there were girls” in the class, she said.

Neither does Gary White, 16, one of Ellerbe’s students. “I like girls, but I don’t like being in classes with girls,” he said. “Teachers seem to like girls better. Girls are too confident. They’re always talking in classes. It can get intimidating.”

The observations of McCann, Ellerbe and White mirror the findings of a report published in the fall, 1993, issue of Research in Middle Level Education. A study of 400 sixth- through eighth-graders in North Carolina found that girls have a higher opinion of themselves.

“Boys tend to puff themselves up more,” said William Purkey, co-author of the study and a counseling professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. “Boys brag when they’re insecure, so it looks like they’re more confident than they really are.”

Although the report focuses on a small sample of students from one state, it contradicts the AAUW’s nationwide poll of 2,400 girls and 600 boys in 1991. That study found that 29% of the high school girls compared to 46% of their male peers agreed they are “happy the way I am.” A year later, the AAUW reported textbooks and teachers favor boys, damaging girls’ self-esteem.

AAUW Executive Director Anne L. Bryant echoed many experts when she said the research “shows that schools seriously shortchange girls. Girls need to have better opportunities and more encouragement.”

Others criticize the AAUW reports as self-serving and scientifically flawed. For instance, self-described feminist Christina Hoff Sommers disputed AAUW’s “deceptive” methodology and “misleading” conclusions in “Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women” (Simon & Schuster, 1994).

“(AAUW reports) do not reflect reality,” said Clifford Adelman, senior research analyst for the U.S. Department of Education. “Females are the greatest success story in American education.”

He rattled off the numbers: Women earn more than half of all associate, bachelors and masters degrees; they receive almost half of the doctorates, law and medical degrees; they are increasingly enrolling at top colleges and universities.

The College Board recently reported that female high school students have increased scores and narrowed the gender gap for the third straight year in the verbal and math sections of the Scholastic Assessment Test.

“The issue of gender inequity is not in the schools but in the labor market,” said Adelman, who is studying the successes and failures of high school students who graduated in 1982 and 1972 and is chronicling the latter in “Lessons of a Generation” (Jossey-Bass/Macmillan), published this month.

Before writing “Failing at Fairness: How America’s Schools Cheat Girls” (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), authors Myra and David Sadker spent years observing classroom interaction at 80 public schools in four states and the District of Columbia. The American University professors concluded that girls fall behind boys in math and science, and teachers--the majority of whom are women--pay more attention to and expect more from boys than girls.

Still, in their chapter called “The Miseducation of Boys,” the Sadkers acknowledge problems facing boys. “Much of the attention boys receive is negative attention,” David Sadker said. “Gender bias is a two-edge sword. Boys’ problems don’t just affect boys. It threatens (equality) for everyone.”

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Brian Slezak, a 42-year-old father of two teen-age boys in Rowland Heights, said he frets about teachers unfairly punishing boys’ “natural aggressiveness.” While in grade school, one of his sons had attention deficit disorder. “Teachers treated my son, who is outspoken and extremely smart, like he was misbehaving. His mind was just racing,” he recalled. “That can really break a kid’s spirit. Luckily, my son grew out of it.”

Educators and psychologists worry that rowdy behavior exhibited by more boys than girls propels school officials to wrongly place boys in special education classes. The National Longitudinal Study of Special Education, conducted by the U.S. Department of Education in 1993, found that boys make up about two-thirds of the classes for students with learning, behavioral and developmental problems.

For the past decade, boys have filled about 90% of Alice Robinson’s special education classes. “A lot of the boys suffer because many students in non-special education classes call them stupid,” said Robinson, a former elementary-school teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District who now teaches in the Bay Area. “It can have a negative long-term effect on the boys. I worry about them.”

Ross Shickler, co-principal of Jordan High School in Long Beach, said he also worries about boys. Often, “There’s a hopelessness and disappointment that is weighing down heavily on boys, causing them to join gangs or drop out,” he said, citing the 3,000-student school’s 11% dropout rate of mostly boys.

He and Mel Collins, co-principal, are hoping to combat the problem with a new self-esteem program. One hundred juniors and seniors will undergo a four-day training program designed to teach them coping, confidence-building and peace-making skills, Shickler said. Students will then help their peers. “Something needs to be done,” he said, “especially for the boys.”