Australian Education Minister Alan Tudge has called an academic’s proposal to rename English to “Language Arts” absolute nonsense. University of Melbourne senior lecturer Melitta Hogarth told a conference for the Australian Association for the Teaching of English that she believed using the name English was an “act of assimilation,” reported The Courier-Mail. Hogarth, an Indigenous Australian, proposed to use other names such as “Language Arts” or “Languages, Literacy, and Communications.” Tudge said he would not support such suggestions and described his concern that a senior lecturer in an Australian university was advocating for such moves. “Absolute garbage which shouldn’t be part of our school system,” Tudge told 2GB radio. “It wasn’t just wanting to change the name. She went on to say that English was about maintaining power and privilege and asserting the besieged sovereignty of the colonial state.” Hogarth said in the conference that Indigenous Australians had their lands, …