ique at all. We may also see a general pattern in our own society that is not as general as we might believe. Examining the experience of others allows us to test possibilities which we have been considering for our own system.
Different frameworks can be utilized to analyze schooling across cultural boundaries, and Brint cites three such perspectives. The Macrohistorical Level tells us how our social institutions were created and so helps us understand them today. This level of analysis is critical for understanding the development of schools as they now operate. The most important reason for the development of schools has been to teach the culture of a group and to prepare the young for their future. Different systems developed over time, but there are certain characteristics these schools have had in common:
Institutions of schooling have always been stamped by the interests and ideals of particular groups and organizations . . . The historically developed ideologies of these classes and institutions are very often decisive for the functioning of schools (Bring, 1998, 20).
The Mesoinstitutional Level of analysis is the middle horizon level of analysis, and here sociologists focus on institutions as they exist at a given moment and jot over time. This type of analysis shows us how institutions are organized and what forces in the environment affect them, and this can help us understand why our institutions do not work as well as required. Institutions are defined as "conventional and legal arrangements developed to perform particular sets of tasks or to regulate particular activities by limiting the number of ways these tasks and activities are accomplished" (Brint, 1998, 21). There are various aspect of institutions which may be analyzed, such as practices related to the realization of the purposes of the institution, of the major actors in the institution, and of the effects of the external environment on the ins...