Music Beyond...Therapy. An Educational Tool for Inclusion

Abstract

Music is an integral part of every person’s life. Scientific research has shown the effectiveness of
music in medical-rehabilitation contexts to the extent that it is considered, for some categories
of people (disabled, socio-cultural, elderly), for the exclusive use of the psychotherapeutic field.
The purpose of this review is to demonstrate the importance that music has also in the educational
and didactic field to “exploit” its peculiarities, “beyond” the therapeutic component to
include the many different contexts of life. Among these, the “digital environments” make music
the protagonist of a “world 2.0”, within which, starting from the strengths of the differentiated
Method of Maria Montessori, it is possible to create a union between pedagogy and musical
education.
The last section deals with deafness and music as a specimen, highlighting how theoretical and
empirical research on this topic has dealt with it from a threefold perspective: on the one hand,
music as rehabilitation therapy for deaf people; on the other, music’s contribution in the overall
education of the deaf; finally, music as entertainment and its enjoyment as an expression of
quality free time for deaf people.