Massimo Borghesi, musictherapist
Enrico Strobino, musician

The authors consider the application of music therapy in schools; their attention is particularly focused on the similarities and differences between music therapy and musical animation.
This means an important critical review of the concepts like education, prevention, rehabilitation, integration and animation in a musical sense.

The inclusion of music therapy in the field of education has always stirred up conflicting opinions. Italian music therapy was born and is growing in education where it has played an important integrative role following the closure of special schools. On the other hand, the combination of the therapeutic aspect with the educational one has raised recurring doubts. Massimo Borghesi (B.M.) and Enrico Strobino (S.E.) will examine this and other themes, posing further questions.

B.M. What is music therapy? The word in itself does not help us much as it is commonly accepted and used as an umbrella term under which various meanings are gathered. In particular it should be specified that in that "music" there is something broader than music as we commonly mean it; the more commonly accepted definition is that of a sound world, which not only includes music from eras and cultures different to our own, but also bodily sounds, noises, phonetic stereotypy, and so on. Things are no less uncertain for the suffix either: in actual fact, it seems that in music therapy "therapy" should be taken as non-verbal psychotherapy, but also as rehabilitation, meaning the techniques for the recovery of abilities which have been compromised following a pathological event, and, in a third sense, also as school integration.
To this we can add the ambiguity regarding the definitions and the boundaries of rehabilitative practice directed at the individual’s social skills and that set of activities that go under the name of musical animation.

One of the translations that the Zingarelli dictionary gives for the word "integrate" is "to include in a context from which an individual or a group was excluded"; we therefore think of a process of insertion of a differently-abled person into the dominant community. This is a fairly widespread definition which I nonetheless consider to be insufficient, as does the author of the most renowned dictionary of the Italian language besides, given that Zingarelli himself gives this definition as the second; the first definition of integrate being "to make something complete, more valid, by adding elements to it". What is so original about this compared to the previous definition is the transition from one-sidedness to exchange; from the encounter there is enrichment, reciprocity, completion. In this case integration means being aware that the difference is not an obstacle to be overcome or to standardise, but rather a resource unite with. Thus it is not only the child with an impairment that gains from the integrative activities, everybody derives benefit from it and the word educate becomes meaningful. This appears to be a key aspect: I have seen autistic children reopen themselves to satisfactory communication with their peers and their peers learn lessons in civility that many adults have never had. I have seen autistic children engrossed in musical activities as play where every gesture they make became like the movements of the conductor for his orchestra: the whole class repeated the sound of that gesture and this amazed even the most withdrawn, the most isolated, and they opened their eyes onto a friendly world, similar to them, to their sounds, and they felt respected even prior to being understood; they felt important for someone. Thus I saw them start up a "musical" game in which they clapped their hands no longer as a stereotypy but intentionally and the class repeated that sound; I saw them amaze their friends who never would have imagined that behind that isolation, behind that handicap, there were such evolved abilities; I saw them organise rhythmic and dynamic (loud and soft) games with a clearly superior ability to that of their class of peers. And I have seen teachers amazed by all of this. Integration is also a benefit, for all the individuals who play a part. But with what music can we support the journey that moves from non-communicating differences to communicating differences? First of all I would say an analogous music, that is music which has the form, sound and emotion of the children it speaks to, that sounds like them.

S.E. In this regard I feel the need to specify that I don’t believe that communicative values are directly ascribable to one musical genre rather than another, as much as the type of "musical experience" performed, proposed and experienced instead.
All musical experiences that attach importance to the body, to physicality, rituality, pleasure and desire, that arouse curiosity and cause amazement and wonder, consequently attract, grab hold and capture. All of this cannot be put down to a musical genre, but depends on the coming together of a great number of factors. I could quote lots of examples, but they are examples that cannot be defined as "true": they are, or they were, true in certain contexts and not in others.
If, however, we take for example the "playful" aspect as our means of interpretation, one could say that there is more playfulness in "Stripsody" by C. Berberian than in any song in the music charts; this does not mean that "Stripsody" in itself has a greater "integrative" value: in short, I find it difficult to establish rules. I am, however, convinced that it is not a question of genres.
Recently all of my students at school have found "Flautofonie" by D. Stratos fascinating: I never would have expected such a thing. One of my profoundly-disabled students fell in love with a Piedmontese song, "La cansun budiarda", which we sang a few of times before performing it during the district’s carnival parade.

B.M. We are not talking about knowledge that comes to us from on high, but which is close to the receivers’ sensory, emotional, cognitive and motor data. It will therefore be music which starts from the idea of clearly organized play. This means putting the children’s motivation at the centre of the musical activity, starting from something that values their natural position.

S . E . I’m not sure that the similarity, the closeness or the familiarity themselves of music help dialogue any more than what takes place through difference, wonder and disorientation. "In amazement encounters are easier" (Perticari, 1996).

B.M. I usually avoid simple reductionisms; again I don’t intend to state here that similarity itself favours dialogue; there are many factors in play in an integrative project. If we really wanted to assign a preferential position to one of these in my opinion it should be intention: what facilitates meeting and exchange more than anything else is the desire, the will, the pleasure and the need for the encounter. We must also acknowledge the possibility that this takes place because the encounter is also influenced by concrete elements, banal if you wish compared to the super-ordinate level of intentions, but still of prime importance if taken as elements which contribute to the facilitation process of integrative projects.
It is a little like saying that if two people want to communicate they will surely find a way to do so, but if they start from a common technical base made up of speaking a language of Latin origins their intention will no doubt be facilitated.
Analogous, clear music, but also natural; a music that you consume, that you work hard for, real and not virtual; a music where you make a mistake and after you’ve made it you hear the sound arriving in the moment that your hand didn’t want it to; in this way they adjust their psycho-motor coordination, they perceive the repercussions that their own musical action has on others; that is to say, error is a recyclable resource. Another characteristic of music for school integration is curiosity. This is a search for sounds, discoveries and compositions; children turn a drum over, they put their head inside it, they scratch its skin; they play the radiators, the windows, the blackboards; and then they assemble and enrich their repertoire with this research, this curiosity. It is music which looks for the sounds, it assembles and disassembles them and then it might discard them, but not because someone orders it to, rather by choice, invention or fantasy: a music that is capable of representing the child’s imaginary world. In fact, there are sounds that frighten, others that amaze, others again that entertain. These sounds can activate sensorial and symbolic functions pertaining to our extremely personal profound identity.  Music for integration is authentic dialogue, where above all we argue, and where peace is the result of a dynamic conquest and not of repressive requests; timbres, rhythms, intervals and intensity can surely become the territory for confrontation and mediation, dissonance and reconciliation, imbalance and harmonization.
Of course, it is music which requires the contribution of someone in possession of some knowledge, someone capable of encouraging assisted experiences, precisely tailored for this encounter which is integration, someone who suggests suitable programmes of work; sure, but who?
The teacher is he who teaches; that is, he facilitates the learning processes. Teachers have always been those who have taken care of imprinting theoretical or practical cognitions in someone else’s mind (from the Latin "in-signare"), perhaps using a particular method which has been gradually perfected over the centuries. The definition of a teacher, therefore, clarifies both the professional and human aptitudes that he has in schooling other individuals and the transfer of knowledge implied in this operation. Nothing of the cognitive level or psychomotor integrity of the receiver or the teacher’s action is provided for in his professional definition; he maintains his own identity, his own status, whether he addresses an athletic final-year university student or to the most ill-fated contrast to this that comes to mind. I say this because I wish to assert that a teacher is a teacher, whoever he teaches.

S.E. I don’t know how many teachers (at least in compulsory schools) would identify with this description today: I personally don’t identify with it at all. The very use of certain terms (to school, to transfer) sends us back to the historical idea of an "instructor", completely away from any recent pedagogic outlook founded on relationships.

B.M. I’m happy to discover that this definition is obsolete; I would invite you to confront your objection with the matter of schedules, registers, marks, etc. Then, I thought that even an enlightened view of teaching couldn’t be exempt from this confrontation.

S.E. I don’t completely agree either with the fact that the identity of the person teaching is not challenged and defined by the receiver. I quote from our document on basic music education:
"We conceive of (musical) education primarily as an encounter- comparison- transformation of resources, desires and identities, rather than as learning (through more or less up-to-date methods) of disciplinary contents and (musical) skills.
We are interested in bringing together projects, motivations, behaviours and values, both musical and not, which create energetic fields where people (teachers, young people and children) establish relationships and confront each other; energetic fields where differences – in roles, age, sex, music, cultures – are not concealed but rather they set dialogue, adaptation and mutual, creative and non-violent transformation processes into motion.
We take this dialogical value as being dominant over other, more conditional values, as a feature that characterizes a polyphonic educational scenario in which the senses and the meanings are continuously discussed, interpreted and not simply accepted or taken for granted. This perspective goes against the trend which still seems to be strong and perhaps dominant today and which sees education as a unidirectional disciplinary programme, a path where knowledge and ability are already programmed from the beginning and must be acquired by everybody according to pre-established procedures and times".

B.M. That’s exactly what I was saying: if documents must exist that are able to communicate intentions other than a "trend which still seems to be strong and perhaps dominant today and which sees education as a unidirectional disciplinary programme, a path where knowledge and ability are already programmed from the beginning and must be acquired by everybody according to pre-established procedures and times" perhaps it means that an everyday life does exist in which the definition of a teacher disregards the receiver (except maybe for support teachers).

S . E . O.K., let’s say that there are many different kinds of everyday life: for example in primary schools, on average, the teachers "disregard the receivers less" than in middle school, and in middle school the teachers disregard less than in high school. Within each of these contexts there are also other various types of "everyday life". I think, though, that the wide spread culture of being a teacher no longer matches your definition. Of course we are referring to "progressive" thinking and not to the ways of thinking that we believe should be discarded (that no doubt still circulate and are resilient, even among many support teachers !! ) .

B.M. Then there is another issue that I would like to bring to your attention: it is understandable that the desire to do something useful for those who suffer, those who have psychophysical disabilities, those who are disturbed, leads us to organize interventions aimed at this goal in any field, even in schools. To this, we can add a fairly common misunderstanding which is probably part of that phenomenon that Melucci (1991) defines as the "therapisation of everyday life", where every activity that involves the disable, seemingly has to take on a therapeutic value in itself, thus creating an inevitable association: play + disability = play therapy, horse-riding + disability = riding therapy, music + disability = music therapy, and so on. You almost get the feeling that the words music therapy at times take on a miraculous power, so that using it to describe our activities makes what we do with the disabled more important, more beneficial to society, more scientifically valid, even if when all is said and done we don’t do anything else but allow them to sing, play, dance and listen to music.
The Italian ministerial programme for primary schools states that: "In the field of sound and musical educational activities, the value that possible specialist music therapy interventions can have for disabled individuals should be born in mind". As Zucchini (1989) said "the words music therapy in this sense should be taken as a pedagogical not therapeutic intervention because we are talking about music interventions at school carried out by music education teachers which would also be conducted with disabled people".
We should remember, however, that the latter go to school for the same reasons as the other children: for educational purposes, not to undergo treatment (something which is just as correct and often necessary but which should be carried out in the appropriate context). What is the purpose of school? Without doubt to encourage cognitive, affective, emotional, social and moral development of children and young people; a music teacher who took care of this would not be a music therapist, but a teacher.
So what does it mean to do music therapy in schools? In the most common situation, we are probably referring to the opportunity that presents itself to music teachers with music therapy competences to do their job as teachers in a more enlightened, creative and complete way than other colleagues, taking part not only directly in the learning of a subject, music, but also and above all creating the basis for a positive school experience, both from the point of view of the experience itself and from the point of view of the results. In other words we could say that these professionals can opt for education through music rather than music education.

S.E. This alternative does not rouse my enthusiasm: the choice of the second hypothesis does not exclude the first, but it incorporates it.

And therefore it isn’t, or can’t be, an alternative. Instead, put like this it sends us back to the old concept of music as a "means for…" which I don’t share. Within a pedagogical view which values aesthetic and artistic experiences there is no longer an alternative between "music education" and education "through" music.

B.M. I fully agree; we could therefore specify that the above conflict only makes sense in so far that the first equivalent is taken as exclusive, that is music education is taken exclusively as the advancement of musical skill. Maybe the same clarification also makes sense in the case of a demagogic misunderstanding of the second equivalent: music as a subject without substance.
There is a second implication of music therapy intervention in schools which is related to successful collaborations where operators that we call music therapists, who have technical- cultural skills specific to treatment intervention and thus very far from teaching, assist the teachers in organizing integrative and preventive interventions. In actual fact, social disability, which burdens almost every impaired person, can spread rather than lessen if not properly considered; emotional isolation can have serious repercussions on emotional s t a b i l i t y, cognitive performance and so on, in a vicious circle of disability – negative experiences – deterioration that can become the key factor throughout the years of development. As can easily be understood, the objective of the intervention in this case is no longer education but treatment, prevention and rehabilitation, and it is therefore indispensable that the figures who take it upon themselves are qualified.

S . E . I still find it difficult to understand how it is possible to provide treatment at school: OK you provide for the simultaneous presence of two figure (the teacher and the music therapist) in the class. Is that enough? And the context? Is adding a person enough to change the objectives of a context? Can you explain to me how this takes place in practice?

B. M . This is difficult for me to understand as well; in fact, for years I argued with some conviction that it was basically impossible to do therapy in schools, not least in Postacchini and Ricciotti’s book "Lineamenti di Musicoterapia" (Outlines of Music Therapy). But every time you take a clear position you have to pre p a re yourself for the fateful moment that sooner or later arrives when you have to reformulate it. Now, if simplification is necessary to have at least some clarity, as you advance in learning things inevitably get complicated.
In elementary terms I think that schools have a task and an organization suited to education and not to therapy, but the introduction of music therapy specialists within a school frequently coincides with the introduction of different questions, reformulation of problems, reallocation of internal setups, certainties turning back into problems. And so we witness the hours of simultaneous presence being transformed into something else; we witness the transformation of chaotic spaces into something else; we witness the transformation of pseudo integrative projects into something else; and if that "something else" is influenced by the view of the person who has specific therapeutic - rehabilitative competences, it may happen that it resembles a setting, a space and a philosophy similar to rehabilitative activities.

S.E. All right, this happens as well. But is it advisable? Is it part of our educational scheme? Is it part of the concept of school that we want? Personally I don’t think so: I would like to work for a school that is less and less centred on "problems" and more and more on "resources" (of who-ever, teachers, students, disabled or not).

B.M. The concept of school that I have at the moment resembles an element in a social mosaic; focussed on the resources present (to be used in the best possible way) and absent (in the awareness of limits).
The composition of the mosaic becomes at least possible when the person who talks of integration fosters a culture of integration in their actions; in that case we will be able to see individuals promoting integration by acting in an integrated way, we will be able to see interconnections between social individuals who, within their own specificity, mutually enrich each other through the exchange in the institutional relationship. I think that music can become an opportunity for a meeting of all resources; I don’t believe that schools as they are organized today can be asked to do everything by themselves. The school is an important polarity of an educational scheme which requires other social resources for its complete articulation.
In this way schools can become active in the promotion and development of a culture of integration which is superior and better than the difficulties and merits of an individual music therapy activity.
For a while I have been asking myself (maybe I shouldn’t admit this to you) if there is really any difference between musical animation and rehabilitation

through music (not therapy) and if, in particular, there is any kind of difference between animation and the applications of rehabilitation of social functions. Reading your work (Strobino, 2001) this question persistently came up again and again and the only, ill-considered answer to the problem was that activities that are produced with a similar philosophy and that are embodied in similar behaviour are only distinguished thanks to a prejudiced definition of the receivers: the healthy ones to you and the disabled ones to me.

S.E. Both Music Education and Music Therapy are "disciplines", that is fields of knowledge that offer themselves with theoretically formalized contexts, objectives, contents, techniques and practices. In this sense they are, I think, quite separable and identifiable and therefore they keep specific identities. I realize that the concept of Music Education that I go by, however, is not a disciplinary one: it is not based, that is, on a body of contents to "learn", on standard objectives to be reached. This is why am more at ease in Animation activities: animation is not a discipline: it is not related to an established knowledge, rather it crosses other types of knowledge, it taints them and it streamlines them.
Animation is closely tied to the "how" and much less to the "what".

B.M. We could also say the same thing about Musical Rehabilitation: it is not the performance in an absolute sense that is at the centre of the project but the "process".
I get the impression that our activities are more advanced that the concepts that we relate them to. Talking about education the way you do definitely goes beyond the meaning of teaching implied in many educational practices, from which I was differentiating making music for rehabilitative purposes; similarly, talking about rehabilitation the way I do goes beyond the meaning of standardization that has stratified into the terrible methodologies and institutions from which you diverged when we began. We both consider diversity as a resource; we both consider fundamental the aesthetic experience, that learning of the body that maybe has an educational and rehabilitative resonance in each of us. Thus, confusion is utmost: if the definitions of music education and rehabilitative music therapy have changed in a convergent direction, does it still make sense to trouble our-selves to define their practices as though they still had divergent functions?

S.E. What do you mean by this question? If the answer were no music therapy would disappear!!

B.M. If the answer were no, the term music therapy would disappear from schools; with this the convergent behaviour of our respective disciplines that aims at the harmonic development of individual resources certainly wouldn’t be cancelled out.
And so I suggest an open finish, enigmatic if you like, not reassuring but maybe stimulating for some (as it has been for us until now): why don’t we conclude our reflection not with an affirmation but with a question? That is, in a reverse path which speaks volumes about the strangeness of our neural interactions, we could start with a title that is an affirmation, music therapy in schools, and arrive inconclusively at the question: music therapy in schools?

What is music therapy? The word in itself does not help us much as it is commonly accepted and used as an umbrella term under which various meanings are gathered.

To integrate is "to make something complete, more valid, by adding elements to it".

Casadei N.,
De Notariis M.
Nuovi programmi per la scuola primaria(New programmes for primary school), Simone, Naples, 1989.

Perticari P.
Attesi imprevisti.
Uno sguardo ritrovato su difficoltà di insegnamento/ apprendimento e diversità delle intelligenze a scuola(Unexpected waiting.

A glance at the difficulty of teaching/ learning and intelligence differences in schools), Bollati Boringhieri,
Turin, 1996.

Postacchini P.L.,
Ricciotti A., Borghesi M.
Musicoterapia (MusicTherapy), Carocci, Rome, 1997.

Strobino E.
Musiche in cantiere (Music in workshops), FrancoAngeli, Milan, 2001.

Zucchini G. L.
Musica e Handicap (Music and Disability), Editrice La Scuola, Brescia, 1989.