Over the protests of her shocked parents, Maria Montessori decided at age    13    to become anengineer. Once enrolled in a technical school, however, she switched her allegiance to medicine.And so it was that in 1896, to everyone’s surprise but her own, Montessori became the first womanin Italy to graduate from    14   school. Not long after, Montessori also became an educator. Theobservations she made of young “idiot children” in asylums and her growing conviction that mental    15    was at root a pedagogical problem led her directly to the writings of Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itardand Edouard Séguin. From these, it was but a short step to the study of pedagogy and thephilosophies of Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel. In quick    16    thereafter Montessori gave a seriesof lectures on special methods of education at a teacher training institute in Rome, was appointeddirector of a medical-pedagogical institute, and taught in the Pedagogic School at the University ofRome. Then, in 1980, she opened the first Casa dei Bambini—a school for “normal” children whowere running wild in Rome’s tenements while their parents were at work14. (A) law (B) medical (C) business (D) language