Kidlat Tahimik gives up nat’l artist perks to protest college curriculum

BAGUIO CITY — Kidlat Tahimik on Tuesday announced that he will return his National Artist medallion and give up the privileges that come with the distinction to protest the government’s Reframed General Education Curriculum (RGEC).

Speaking at a Teachers Camp forum, Kidlat said he intends to surrender the medallion to urge the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) and the Department of Education to review the treatment of humanities and social sciences in the RGEC, which takes effect in 2028.

“General education subjects have been cut down from 72 to 36 units and will again be sliced down to 18 units under the new curriculum,” the 84-year-old filmmaker said.

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“We are following the Western model which requires us to specialize … And often we favor over-specialization in the sciences because these are quantifiable, right? I think we have to just be aware that subjects regarding history, the arts and our culture are as valuable and should not be reduced to almost zero,” he added.

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The filmmaker said he will turn over his medallion to the National Commission on Culture and the Arts on Wednesday, June 17. The medallion was crafted by the Central Bank and presented to him by former President Rodrigo Duterte in 2018.

The Baguio-born Kidlat, who used to be a professional economist named Eric de Guia before shifting careers, formalized his intention to abdicate as a National Artist in a position letter he sent at midnight to Ched Chair Shirley Agrupis.

READ: GE curriculum shift moved to 2028

READ: Higher education and the Formation of Civic Responsibility

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Kidlat informed Agrupis that he is “surrendering my prestigious medallion of the Order of National Artists (ONA) and I will forego my National Artist’s amenities such as monthly stipends, healthcare, and the privilege to be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.”

“Competency is the keyword in mass education manuals today— to equip skills for learners to compete globally. This means less focus on enhancing humanistic wholeness in our youth. That’s how econometrists and MBAs (individuals with a master’s degree in business administration) ideally frame our bagong bayanis (new heroes) for export,” he added.

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He also said the RGEC expressed “the educational mantra today, which is to export more skilled Pinoys to bring back more dollars to our ailing economy.”

“Ergo, it’s a waste of time for classrooms to indulge in compassionate ethics (or pakipag-kapwa in Filipino), in communal inter-personal relations (ginhawa), in harmony with nature (kapwa-kalikasan) and in spiritual balancing (kagandang loob). These unquantifiables are invisible in the econometrists’ balance-sheet of progress,” he added.

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He also noted that teaching culture, history and the social sciences provides the “brakes” which are necessary for a society to slow down and analyse what it will have to confront in the near future. /mcm