Abstract
Montessori is one of the most fascinating and controversial pedagogues of all time. On the one hand, the naturalists reproached her for the rigidity and artificiality of her method, as well as her rejection of productive imagina¬tion and fantasy. On the other hand, progres¬sive educators reproached the individualist and prescriptive character of her method. The mod¬ernists reproached her for her religiosity. Some criticized her for accelerating learning or for not respecting the freedom of the child, others for the contrary. Christians branded her a sec¬ularist, positivist, naturalist, and theosophist, while theosophists defined her as Catholic. These paradoxical criticisms are due, among other reasons, to the context of the an-timodernist frenzy in which she developed her method, to her network of friends in Freema-son circles, to the numerous nuances of her method, to her resistance to fitting in with ex-isting educational currents, to the instrumen¬talization of her method by third party inter¬ests, to her sometimes entangled and not very clear language and to the lack of knowledge of her method in action.