That’s the question a lot of parents and educators are asking — and Our Sunday Visitor takes a closer look:

Dr. Leonard Sax didn’t have a very supportive response when a patient in his private practice in Maryland told him that her son’s academic performance improved when she placed him in an all-boys Catholic school.

“I told her that with all due respect, I regarded single-sex education as an antiquated relic,” he told Our Sunday Visitor. “She told me, ‘With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about.”

Curious, he visited a similar school and was surprised to see that the boys in the third and fourth grades did not have chairs.

“I was told that when boys of that age sit down, their brains shut off,” he said.

That was eight years ago. Since then, Sax, who holds a doctorate in psychology as well as a medical degree, founded and is the executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, based in Exton, Pa.

He has visited more than 270 schools in the United States and abroad, many in the Catholic schools system, and is the author of many scholarly papers and articles, plus two books, “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences”(Broadway, $14.95) and “Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men” (Basic Books, $15.95). He has been interviewed on numerous national and international news programs and was featured in Time Magazine in 2005 and in the New York Times Magazine in 2008 — first in a more positive article, and later when his work was criticized.

The issue of single-sex education is not without controversy, and Sax is quick to point out that NASSPE “does not assert that single-sex education is best.”

“We assert that children come in all different shapes and sizes and lots of variations,” he said. “Girls-only schools are best for some girls and boys-only schools are great for some boys, but not all, and every parent should have a choice.”

You can check out the rest at the link.