Researching newspapers and almanacs of the decade of 1870, and documents about the foundation of the "night classes", maintained by the Sociedade Propagadora of Instruction, in Campinas, intended to characterize the education offered by that school as besides the first objective of all and any elementary education, the literacy. The objective of that school was to introduce children and adults in the new society that was formed. This article intends to point the moral formation that the elite of Campinas proposed for the poor man that lived in the city.