Proceedings, Oxford, UK (2002) - World Federation of Music Therapy

school becomes a good opportunity for observation, diagnosis and even
intervention in certain cases. As long as we are all aware of the
limitations of dealing with problematic cases in an educational setting,
the more tools a teacher has to identify such cases and work with them,
the more he/she can contribute to those children’s lives. Music activities
can function as one of those tools, even when the teacher’s music and
therapy competencies are very limited. The challenge is then upon us to
promote the intercultural encounter between therapy and education, learn
each other’s language and come across with the creative arts message
that music can be used primarily as a creative experience and promote a
particular way of relating that will benefit the development of the normal
child and the child with problems in all its dimensions.
Music therapists who work directly in educational settings bring the
creative arts therapies perspective into the school, exchanging their
knowledge and experiences with the educators. Side by side, they work
with the same subject, i.e. the child, and their challenge is to create room
in the institution for their different approaches to the child and their
different uses of music. Those of us who introduce teachers and
educators to music therapy bring knowledge and experiences into the
educational setting through a sort of “relayed process”, for we work with
the teacher, providing him/her with some knowledge of our discipline
and inviting him/her to experience music from a different perspective,
which will hopefully contribute to the way they work with the children
from then on.
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