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School scenes in nineteenth and twentieth literature and classical movies draw a dark school environment such as barrack or jail. Writers, caricaturists and movie directors venomously criticize school. Fiction contributes to truth about past. This was admitted after biting epistemological discussions. This article analyses school scenes and, then, focuses on the ‘surveillant général’ (chief supervisor), a key character in French schools, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In collective imagery, he appears as a strong character, firmly enforcing order and discipline in secondary schools, a disciplinarian in a strong hierarchical system. We intend to approach him in a historical way which cross-references different historical sources and compare to his fictional portrait.