An interaction exists among cognitive processes, basic learning skills, and the cultural and social contexts in which they develop. Primary socialization experiences, those that children are exposed to in their personal, immediate lives, form a fundamental basis for cognitive development. In secondary socialization settings children acquire specific learning skills. Poor and minority students do not encounter favorable circumstances for cognitive development in schools. An external, societal norm is imposed upon these children without recognition of the cognitive processes already developed in primary socialization settings. Schools tend to ignore or consider irrelevant anthropological, sociological, and psychological data offering evidence that cultures differ in how they perceive and cognitively organize the world of experience. Schools make a critical mistake in assuming that the same basic skills developed in the dominant culture will be meaningful and useful in other cultural systems of knowledge. The functional analysis of the use of academic skills is necessary as a framework for creating curriculum applications. An interactionist paradigm offers the most promise for investigation of and experimentation with functional learning systems. (Author/MK)