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

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 educa- tional 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.