No Heaven Allowed!

You may not know it, but I teach in English for a living in Japan (which is great because I get to be called Sensei). Today I noticed something rather funny in my coworker’s (who is also my girlfriend) classroom.

This wall covered with pictures from an English grammar book had one pictured crossed out by a 10 year-old girl student:

Cute, but not particularly funny, you say? Perhaps a closer look at the picture she chose would be revealing:

"Everybody goes to heaven eventually."

My initial reaction was of entertainment and awesome. Japan is a very secular country and the fact that a little Japanese girl scribbled out the heaven picture over all the others she could have randomly picked made it that much better. (I keep trying to convince myself that she deliberately chose to deface that picture in an act of defiance, but I find that highly unlikely.)

It wasn’t long though, before I started to think, Why the fuck is some textbook using religion to teach English to Japanese kids?