2 MIN READ

By KIMBERLIE QUITASOL
www.nordis.net

BAGUIO CITY — National Artist Kidlat Tahimik has offered to surrender his Order of National Artists medallion and to forgo the privileges associated with the honor in protest against the Commission on Higher Education’s (CHED) proposed reduction of college General Education (GE) units from 36 to 18.

In a position paper-protest letter addressed to CHED Chairperson Shirley C. Agrupis, the Baguio-based filmmaker criticized the Reframed General Education Curriculum (RGEC) as a continuation of a colonial and market-driven education system that prioritizes labor market competitiveness over cultural formation and critical thinking.

He released his statement during a fellowship training session for the BAGANI: Rising Leaders Development Program (RLDP) at Albert Hall, Teachers Camp, on Monday morning, where he served as a guest speaker at an event spearheaded by the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP). 

“To me, such policy moves are a regression backwards to our colonial-imposed education,” Tahimik wrote, warning against what he described as the dominance of “quantifiable competencies” in shaping higher education.

He said the shift risks further weakening the humanities, regional languages, ethics, and cultural values in favor of producing graduates tailored for domestic and global labor markets increasingly shaped by automation and artificial intelligence.

“Competency is the keyword in mass education manuals today. This means less focus on enhancing humanistic wholeness in our youth,” he said.

Tahimik traced the logic of current education policy to the American colonial framework of reading, writing, and arithmetic, which he said helped shape a system geared toward labor production and social conformity.

As a symbolic act of protest, Tahimik said he is surrendering his National Artist medallion and renouncing its associated benefits.

“As a protest, I am surrendering my prestigious medallion of the Order of National Artists (ONA) and I will forego my National Artist’s amenities… A sort of hunger strike,” he wrote.

He stressed that the act is personal and should not reflect on other National Artists.

Tahimik’s protest follows an earlier call by educators in Baguio and Benguet for CHED to scrap the reframed curriculum altogether. The Cordillera educators argued that reducing GE units would weaken holistic education and deepen what they described as a market-driven approach to learning.

CHED has deferred the implementation of the reframed curriculum to 2028 following widespread opposition, while maintaining that the proposal aims to align higher education with evolving employment demands.

Tahimik ended his letter with a call to defend cultural grounding in education. “Sugod mga Kapatid! Bawi-in ang LIWANAG ng ating kultura’t kasaysayan sa curricula!”

(Charge! Let us reclaim the light of our culture and history in the curriculua!) #nordis.net