The purpose of this article analyzed aspects of the ideal education, present elements in the speech of Abílio César Borges, through his proposal to reform education, as the General Director of Studies, with special attention to his proposals to respect teaching work. Through historical method, documentary research is anchored in the Report on Public Instruction of the Province of Bahia, in 1856. The methodological operation took place using the discourse analysis category, based on Foucault (2013; 2021); operating with the concept of intellectual, by Sirinelli (2003); in dialogue with Saviani (2000), Gondra and Sampaio (2010) and Alonso (2015) to problematize Abílio's trajectory in the historical-educational field.The Report, source and object of analysis, allowed to capture data concerning provincial public education, as well as a range of representations of the debates of the time, through patterns and perspectives that made up an ideal of education and civility.