A Missionary School A Swahili schoolboy leads his classmates in a reading lesson in Dar es Salaam in German East Africa in 1903; portraits of Emperor Wilhelm II and his wife look down on the classroom, a reminder of imperial control. Europeans argued that they were spreading the benefits of a superior civilization with schools like this one, which is unusually well built and furnished because of its strategic location in the capital city. Schoolrooms were typically segregated by sex, and lessons for young men and women adhered to Western notions of gender difference.