Midrash and sophism in the context of transformation scientific and educational traditions in the 21st century

The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st cen-tury is characterized by multiple crises in most aspects of human existence, among which the education crisis is one of the most noticeable. The usual logic of problematizing and seeking ways to overcome the education crisis is linked to changes in the nor-mative-legal and economic conditions of educational activities, and much less attention is paid to the ontological problems of education. In this regard, the first task of this study was to con-ceptually formulate a request regarding the resources and tools for overcoming the ontological crisis in education. In the context of studying the main stages and results of three decades of re-forms in the field of Russian education, three interconnected re-quests have been identified: 1) Individualization and differentia-tion of the content of education while maintaining basic value-semantic unity; 2) Ensuring the social and economic relevance of the content of education, ensuring its demand and feasibility; 3) Rooting the content of education in social and humanitarian tra-ditions that are capable of influencing and transforming modern social and humanitarian practices. The categories of “midrash” and “sophism” emerged at roughly the same time (around the 5th century BCE) and represent complex phenomena of oral cultures that developed in the Eastern Mediterranean: midrash in the con-text of the Jewish religious tradition, and sophism (as well as the syllogism that gave rise to it) in the ancient city-state tradition. Moreover, each of these phenomena fully corresponds to the re-quirements listed above. 1) Reconceptualization of the educa-tional attitude as a means of ensuring intergenerational connec-tion and continuity; 2) Inherent duality of cultural and education-al traditions in their relationship with “text” and “language” (to which modern culture adds “visible image”); 3) The need to modernize the system of educational standards based on dia-chronic traditions and synchronic cultural-anthropological mod-els; 4) Actualization of issues and tools for ensuring dialogue and "openness" of traditions, identifying their contextual meanings and requests addressed by current socio-humanitarian practices; 5) Integration of projects, socio-educational initiatives and prac-tices around identified scientific and educational traditions and cultural-educational models underlying them.