Q 01/05

As a teenager, Maria Montessori enrolled at a boys' technical school in Rome hoping to enter which profession?

A) Accounting

B) Engineering

C) Architecture

D) Journalism

Answer · why

B) Engineering

Engineering was her goal when she entered technical school, a rare ambition for a girl in 1880s Italy. She later switched to medicine and became one o...

Q 02/05

At medical school in the 1890s, Maria Montessori had to do which task alone after hours, away from male classmates?

A) Dissecting cadavers

B) Examining patients

C) Delivering babies

D) Assisting at surgery

Answer · why

A) Dissecting cadavers

Dissecting cadavers beside men was judged improper for a woman, so she worked in the anatomy room alone once the others had gone. She took up smoking ...

Q 03/05

The materials Maria Montessori later used in ordinary schools were first designed around 1900 for which pupils?

A) Gifted children

B) Orphaned children

C) Disabled children

D) Immigrant children

Answer · why

C) Disabled children

Disabled children at Rome's Orthophrenic School were the first to use them, and some went on to pass the public exams set for other pupils. The result...

Q 04/05

In 1907 Maria Montessori helped four- and five-year-olds learn to write using alphabet letters cut from which material?

A) Velvet

B) Sandpaper

C) Leather

D) Embossed tin

Answer · why

B) Sandpaper

Sandpaper letters let children trace each shape with a fingertip while saying its sound. Pupils in her Rome classroom were soon writing and reading fa...

Q 05/05

At a 1915 world's fair in San Francisco, Maria Montessori ran a demonstration classroom whose walls were made of what?

A) Canvas

B) Bamboo

C) Wire mesh

D) Glass

Answer · why

D) Glass

Glass walls let thousands of fairgoers watch the children at work. She had returned to America to show her method at the Panama–Pacific International ...