Veritas et Virtus

Morning Reflections

The Official Blog of Columbus Classical Academy

Holy Tuesday: “Have faith in God”

Daniel Gibson
April 15, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

Today Christians around the world celebrate Holy Tuesday in the lead up to Easter. It is often also referred to as Fig Tuesday, referring to the gospel accounts of when Jesus cursed the fig tree. Mark’s narrative reads: 12 On the...

Holy Monday: “You must accept or reject the story”

Daniel Gibson
April 14, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

For Christians around the world, this week marks perhaps the most important week of the year: Holy Week. Beginning yesterday, with Palm Sunday and continuing through Holy Saturday, the days of Holy Week follow the story of Jesus’ entry into...

How can a young man keep his way pure?

Daniel Gibson
April 10, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

We memorize to fill our travel bag; we memorize, because it preserves the past; and we memorize, because it lets us walk a mile in someone else’s words. But ultimately, we memorize, because it changes us. And that is why...

Walk a mile in someone else’s words

Daniel Gibson
April 9, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

Have you ever heard the idiom, “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes”? It means that we should first imagine what it is like to be someone else, to experience life from their perspective, before we pass judgment. It is...

Memorization is preservation

Daniel Gibson
April 8, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

You’ve probably heard people talk about the importance of teaching “critical thinking” in schools. They’re not entirely wrong. But critical thinking is often presented as an advance or improvement over “rote memorization”—and its why so few of your peers in...

“Let your memory be your travel bag”

Daniel Gibson
April 7, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

The great physicist, Albert Einstein, is credited with having said: “Never memorize something that you can look up.” Today, with all manner of information at our fingertips, it is unclear whether there is anything worth memorizing at all—everything, it seems,...

Rahab’s lie

Daniel Gibson
April 4, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

Our final thought experiment this week is no thought experiment at all – it is the true story of Rahab, from the Book of Joshua. After God had promised the Israelites the land of Jericho, Joshua sent spies to check it out:...

Cicero’s grain merchant

Daniel Gibson
April 3, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

Today’s thought experiment comes from Marcus Tullius Cicero, who considers in his book On Duties, circumstances “when utility seems to conflict with honorableness.” From our very own Dr. Newton’s translation, Cicero writes: “[I]f a good man sets out from Alexandria to...

Singer’s drowning child

Daniel Gibson
April 2, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

Peter Singer, the atheist, moral philosopher, poses the following thought experiment about the moral obligation to save another human being: A man wearing a thousand dollar suit sees a child drowning in the ocean and being pulled away by the...

Nozick’s experience machine

Daniel Gibson
April 1, 2025

Head of School, Morning Reflections

Yesterday’s thought experiment was about identity—once all of its parts were replaced, was the Ship of Theseus still the same ship? Today, we consider value theory and whether happiness or pleasure is really the highest good. In his book Anarchy, State,...

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