Quentin Tarantino knows more about 1970s cinema than I know about anything. That was the thought that stuck with me when I put down the celebrated filmmaker’s book Cinema Speculation (which I missed when it came out in 2022).

Now, knowing my readers as I do, I suspect many of you are thinking, “So what?”

Allow me to rephrase. Tarantino exhibits a seamless fusion of passion, precision, practicality, and depth about filmmaking. It got me musing about the tired tropes that so often dominate our education debates.

The expletive-dotted narration in Tarantino’s book feels different from most of what passes for expertise or analysis in 2025. He doesn’t speak with the abstractions of academics or pundits. His musings are not the polished talking points of politicos or the make-it-up-as-you-go rambling of podcasters. And he seems incapable of the inch-deep posturing of influencers and hot-take artists. What Tarantino offers is something more grounded, deeply versed in history and context.

Tarantino’s knowledge of genres, movies, actors, scripts, and studio machinations is staggering. Writing of director Don Siegel, Tarantino explains that “the rogue law enforcement officer” is the “quintessential Siegel protagonist” and proceeds nonchalantly to list:

Not only Dirty Harry, Madigan, and The Verdict’s Grodman, but Eastwood’s Coogan in Coogan’s Bluff, Michael Parks’s Vinny McKay in Stranger on the Run, as well as David Niven’s comical Scotland Yard Inspector in Rough Cut (even in Siegel’s two espionage films, The Black Windmill and Telefon, his protagonists, secret agents working for MI6, the KGB, and the CIA, all end up going rogue inside their own agencies).

He talks about a half-century-old film I’d never even heard of, and which were made before he could drive, with the uncanny accuracy of a veteran insider: “The supporting cast of The Outfit is filled with one terrific actor’s face after another (Timothy Carey, Richard Jaeckel, Sheree North, Marie Windsor, Jane Greer, Henry Jones, Bill McKinney).” He adds, “The Outfit was one of the last films made under the tenure of MGM studio head James Aubrey . . . [who] was pissed off at the way the New York and Los Angeles critics had treated his slate of MGM films. So he began opening new MGM movies regionally first.”

Tarantino shows the same effortless fluency when talking about an array of cinema-adjacent topics. He observes, “In the eighties, inside the pages of Fangoria magazine, it was horror film movie directors that were its readers’ heroes, along with special effect makeup artists (Tom Savini, Rick Baker, and Rob Bottin). That was a drastic difference when compared to Forrest Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, the leading horror movie mag of adolescents ten years before.”

I can’t think of many education experts who can discuss the broad sweep of contemporary education research or practice with that kind of cool familiarity, much less the ins-and-outs of pedagogy and curriculum circa 1970.

Yet, at no point did I feel the urge to tell Tarantino, “Hey, go touch the grass.” He’s certainly a weird dude, but he comes across as remarkably down to earth. His love of cinema bloomed early, when he was dragged (as a five- or six-year-old) to a dizzying array of grown-up films. It’s clear that love is rooted in those memorable L.A. nights and his knowledge is deeply personal. There’s no distinction here between engagement and expertise. They’re two sides of a single coin.

Tarantino’s narrative reminded me of the vibe I used to get when I’d listen to Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad, discuss screenwriting, photography, editing, camera equipment, production design, and casting on the show’s official podcast. Gilligan would start riffing on all the details involved in some elaborate crane shot that I’d never even noticed, and he’d do it with such lucidity and enthusiasm that I’d emerge with an urgent desire to go rewatch it so I could figure out what he was talking about.

The genius of Tarantino and Gilligan isn’t just about the 10,000 hours of practice. It’s not even just about artistry or craftsmanship. It’s something more primal, more human. It fuses passion, technique, practical experience, and a fastidious attention to detail.

As I read Tarantino’s book, I found myself noodling on some of our familiar fights in the ed community about experiential learning vs. academic instruction, or skills vs. content knowledge.

These tensions are real, but they also seem to suggest we have to pick a side when meaningful learning is a product of both.

While enthusiasts for “21st century skills” argue that educators needn’t worry overmuch about “mere facts,” an intensive fascination with detail is the signature of engaged learning. We see this routinely with kids when they first discover dinosaurs, football, or the Disney canon. They gobble up particulars and regurgitate them (endlessly). Harvard’s razor-sharp Jal Mehta has explored this kind of “deeper learning” at great length, noting that schools do far better at cultivating rigorous passion in extracurriculars than in the academic core. Go watch a well-run football practice and you’ll see engaged learners intensely focused on mastering skills and knowledge. The engagement is embedded in the hard work.

Champions of academic rigor, on the other hand, are frequently dismissive about concerns that a narrow focus on measurable achievement can yield alienating, mind-deadening instruction.  Facts, details, and specifics can (and should) be interesting. Way, way back when I taught world geography in high school, I was always struck that my 9th-graders loved the time we’d spend memorizing countries and geographical features. They liked wading into clear, knowable particulars that helped them make sense of the world. The same held for my 10th-graders in economics when it came to taxes, budgeting, and investing. But this means champions of rigor need to appreciate what makes knowledge come to life.

A lot of our debates presume that we need to choose between passion and precision, that we need to answer the question, “Are you on team ‘Love of Learning’ or team ‘Actual Learning’?” But maybe we’re thinking about this wrong. What if the better question is, “What would it look like to be on Team Tarantino?”

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”