diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/kernel/agnostics.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/kernel/agnostics.rb
index dff1145408..c0cb4fb427 100644
--- a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/kernel/agnostics.rb
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/kernel/agnostics.rb
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-module Kernel
+class Object
   # Makes backticks behave (somewhat more) similarly on all platforms.
   # On win32 `nonexistent_command` raises Errno::ENOENT; on Unix, the
   # spawned shell prints a message to stderr and sets $?.  We emulate