Philippine education cuts threaten holistic formation: Kidlat Tahimik warns against severing cultural roots in youth development
Original framing: “National Artist Kidlat Tahimik urges educators to rethink proposed general education cuts and help young Filipinos reconnect with their roots” — bing news
Tahimik’s own work, like *Perfumed Nightmare*, embodies the artist as a bridge between tradition and modernity, challenging the sacred-profane divide in education. The cuts threaten to extinguish the spiritual dimension of learning, where creativity is not a luxury but a survival tool. Indigenous cosmologies, such as the Tagalog *loob* (inner self) concept, frame education as a journey toward wholeness, not just employability.
Tahimik’s intervention exposes a systemic paradox: the Philippine education system, born from colonial erasure, now faces neoliberal erasure under the guise of ‘efficiency.
’ The proposed cuts are not merely budgetary but ontological, threatening to sever the lifeline between generations and ancestors that has sustained Filipino identity for millennia. This crisis is global in scope, echoing Indigenous movements from the Māori *kaupapa* to the Māori *kaupapa* to the Māori *kaupapa*, yet uniquely Filipino in its colonial wound. The solution lies in reversing the flow of knowledge—from top-down imposition to bottom-up co-creation—where educators become facilitators of ancestral wisdom rather than gatekeepers of Western canon. By centering indigenous epistemologies, the system can reclaim its soul while adapting to modernity, proving that decolonization is not nostalgia but the only viable path to resilience. The trickster’s laughter in Tahimik’s work reminds us that the most radical act is to take education back from the technocrats and return it to the people.