Thoughtful Thursday
It wasn't a huge donation because I can't really do that at the moment, but it was something. It was something more than I was thinking I could donate.
It is interesting that AMTA is going to crowd funding for things like this, and these types of money requests are confusing me right now. Why is this happening?
I make no secret on my blog about how I feel about the directions that AMTA has decided to take in the recent years. I am still a member for the sole fact that I am not quite ready to give up my internship program. I do not feel like many of the views and opinions that AMTA currently promotes are representative of my own views or opinions, so I am a bit uneasy about being a member. I have pulled away from the music therapy community due to lots of screaming voices that do not seem to care about anyone other than themselves.
So, I am coming to this particular post from a particular viewpoint.
I love history. I have been to the music therapy archives to explore a specific theme for a paper that was handily rejected by one reviewer at JMT, lauded by one reviewer at JMT, and helpfully critiqued by one reviewer at JMT. It will never be published in the JMT, but I guess I could self-publish it. Hm. I've never thought about that. I don't have to be published in a peer-reviewed journal for my job, so I could release it to others on my own.
I enjoy seeing what music therapists from before say about the issues that we continue to grapple with. My exploration into the archives showed that many of the "NAMES" in music therapy were engaged in conversations about how to best educate students, about clinical training requirements, about how to allocate funds from membership, about how to establish research to break into various population treatment protocols. Those same "NAMES" argued with each other vehemently about all the different things that we STILL argue about as part of the community. We have not made significant progress in many of these areas.
So, I feel that music therapy history is something that music therapists should know more about than they do. Our education focuses on the present age rather than looking much at the minutiae of music therapists past. I guess we could do more, but that is difficult to put into an already complicated skill development educational process. I am not a professor, so I do not have any say in what educators teach in their classes, but I would love to hear that an intern had to read an article from our first music therapy journal as part of a history project during their undergraduate education. I think that would be good for us all - remembering that our squabbles and issues are not unique to us - they are part of our profession from the very beginning!
If AMTA is not able to provide this oversight of the archives through my membership dues and the dues of others, then I want to know why. Why wasn't AMTA able to cover the $4,500 dollars that were needed to preserve this journal? If the crowd funding effort does not raise the money needed, will AMTA cover the rest? Or will this piece of history be allowed to crumble? What will happen to the money that I donated? I do not want it to go to AMTA. I do not want to be contributing more to the general fund through things like this - that would be a sneaky thing. [Please note that my brain is currently snowed-under, so my brain leaps to conspiracies more readily than usual... also, I have NO idea how this crowd funding actually works...]
It is time to head out to my job. I have three groups and one individual today. I wrote two complete TMEs yesterday. I need to transcribe the music onto a neater page so I can attach pictures to the TMEs, but that is pretty much all that has to be done today. I want to do some more exploration of how to teach logical thought and critical thinking to adult learners, so I will spend some time in research into those topics. My brain is starting to wake up, so I will head up the stairs and then head down the highway.
Happy Thursday, all!
Comments
Post a Comment