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National Artist and filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik said he is giving up the country’s highest cultural honor and returning his medallion to protest changes in the college curriculum that he warned could further weaken the humanities and social sciences.

Tahimik, whose real name is Eric de Guia, made the declaration Tuesday before youth leaders at a forum in Teachers Camp in Baguio City.

“You are witnesses to my act of protest,” he said as he raised his National Artist medallion.

The Baguio-based artist, who was proclaimed National Artist in 2018, said he wrote Commission on Higher Education Chair Shirley Agrupis to inform the agency that he was relinquishing the title because of policies tied to the Reframed General Education Curriculum.

In his June 15 letter, Tahimik said the curriculum appears designed to produce graduates with “easy-to-quantify skills in job fairs,” which he called “a regression backwards to our colonial-imposed education.”

He linked the policy to the American colonial education system introduced by the Thomasites, the American teachers who arrived in the Philippines in 1901 aboard the US Army Transport Thomas.

“Simply teach them the 3-‘R’s. Yes, the American slang for Reading, ‘Ritin n ‘Rithmetic by the good-intentioned Thomasites—for the little brown brothers in the new island possessions,” Tahimik said.

“To me, the total assimilation of Philippine education into this Thomasite philosophy was so successful, it continues today,” he added. “The colonial policy had a less visible aim—by homogenizing the youth for maximizing GDP (gross domestic product), the natives would also be easier to govern. And yes, easier to employ—by calibrating our islander kids’ brains toward ‘competitive competencies.’”

Tahimik said he would surrender the Order of National Artists medallion and give up the benefits that come with the honor, including monthly stipends, health care and the privilege of burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

“I am surrendering my prestigious medallion of the Order of National Artists, and I will forgo my national artist’s amenities (monthly stipends, health care, a privilege to be buried in Libingan ng mga Bayani) as a sort of hunger strike,” he said, referring to himself as an “ex-national artist.”

Tahimik said he would return the medallion to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts on June 17.

He said the gesture was meant to force a deeper conversation on whether Philippine education should simply follow global employment trends or continue to protect culture, history and identity.

At the forum, Tahimik said colleges had been directed to reduce general education units under the RGEC from 71 to 36, and later to 18.

He warned that the reduction could weaken instruction on Philippine history, heroes, language and origins.

Despite his protest, Tahimik said the National Artist recognition remained meaningful to him.

Still, he stressed that his action should not diminish the honor given to other National Artists.

“My individual act should by no means taint the prestige of my distinguished fellow national artists,” he said. “This is my personal gesture in good faith to spotlight that somehow our country’s ‘walang-paki’ (we don’t care) DNA might be traceable to the 3-‘R’s-only pedagogy of our colonizers. If this elementary-level menu is today being extended to college levels, quo vadis (where are we going)?”

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