Those who knew him affirm that he was one of the people most genuinely concerned about improving education in our country. Faithful to his Jesuit formation, he remarked more than once that the great error of our education is that it had become a business and that schools, less and less, cared less about forming sensitive and intelligent human beings, by virtue of the mercantile machinery. His participation in the educational reform commissions of the 60s-70s -during the government of Velasco Alvarado – They made him a reference for generations of educators who saw in his ideas the reflection of those utopias that were buried by the inefficient twists and turns of politics and the particular interest superimposed on the common interest. Ricardo Morales Basadre , a Jesuit father and full-time teacher, he passed away yesterday, January 23, 2014, at the age of 85. His remains are veiled in the Virgen de Fátima Church in Miraflores.
The father Ricardo Morales Basadre S. J . He was one of the educators who, with other education professionals, was part of the National Commission that was preparing the Report on the Peruvian Educational Reform. He was later appointed President of the Superior Council of Education, in charge of conducting and monitoring said reform during the seventies. It was from July 1992, when the Educational Forum was founded, that it developed its great commitment to educational improvement and the strengthening of the democratic culture of our country. For nine consecutive years he was president of this important educational institution of civil society, the same one that has undeniable national and international recognition.
Ricardo Morales he is a priest and educator. Due to his experience and vast knowledge of the educational subject, social sensitivity, closeness to children and adolescents, simplicity and consideration, respect for plurality, willingness to reach consensus, and his permanent capacity for teamwork, he has earned the affection and respect of the teachers and their students of La Inmaculada School, of broad sectors of teachers and many educational actors, as well as of their colleagues in the different educational, social and religious institutions in which it operates.
In 2001, he was Executive President of the Commission for a National Agreement for Education, which carried out the first National Consultation on education held in the country and mobilized close of 500,000 people in Lima and provinces. The results of this participatory, plural, decentralized and democratic process were summarized in two books:Proposal for a National Agreement for Education and Voices of the Country; In this way, a new style of making educational policies was inaugurated in the country, facing the citizens and in dialogue with the actors involved.
he was also President of the National Education Council, an autonomous and specialized body in the sector. Father Morales has a degree in Philosophy (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), a degree in Theology (Colegio Máximo Cristo Rey de México) and a Master's degree in Education (Standford University-San Francisco. USA). He was General Director of Colegio La Inmaculada until 2006, Provincial Superior of the Jesuits of Peru and President of the Consortium of Catholic Schools.
he has participated as a speaker in different national and international academic events of UNESCO , the OAS , World Bank among other institutions. Also, he has developed many studies and works related to education and human rights, educational reforms in the region, adolescent training, educational quality and equity, tutoring and educational guidance, among others. He has many honorary distinctions in his professional life as a priest and educator. Among the most important is the decoration with the Palmas Magisteriales in the degree of Amauta granted by the Peruvian State on July 5, 2001 (information taken from an article by Idel Vexler, a member of Foro Educativo, published in 2003 in Diario La República).