Traditional civil disobedience has usually combined deep spiritual beliefs with intense political ones. And while appreciating the differences in the two worlds--render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's--practitioners respected both. While sometimes willful and defiant and sometimes passive to the point of self-extinction, the heroes of civil disobedience believed in the need to obey a higher authority and to be cleansed of self-interestedness. Modern civil disobedience, however, often takes a more selfish and destructive bent, as the example of a recent environmental protest shows. The author attributes this change to the prevalence of "constructivism"--encouraging students to "construct...their own knowledge through their own discoveries"--in the modern classroom. When applied to instruction on civil disobedience, it can push students toward a naive belief in the primacy of conscience (which can easily become a synonym for self-centeredness). The forces that shape civics education--teachers, standards, methods, and materials--have important roles to play. But they must state clearly that civil disobedience differs from peaceful and legal protest; that civil disobedience involves violating a law that a rightly formed conscience determines to be in conflict with a fundamental principle of human dignity; and that civil disobedience is circumscribed by the practitioner's obligation to honor legitimate government by accepting punishment openly and respectfully. Without this tilt toward authority and away from anarchy, individual liberty will be endangered.