Andrew Holness, the education minister, will not be surprised if serious people begin to assume that he does not have enough on his plate, hence his emerging role as enforcer of a simplistic morality.

Or worse, there are those who will cast him as anti-intellectual, a stifler of the creative imagination, underestimating the capacities and potential of Jamaica, and proponent of a sterile learning environment.

The more paranoid among us may even have visions of bonfires of books and the blacklisting and banning of texts.

We, of course, do not believe such things about Mr Holness and commend the energy and exuberance he has brought to the job these last six months. We do, however, agree that he is misguided on his declared intent to withdraw some literature texts from schools because they contain expletives.

Two of the books that are on the minister's radar have a tangential connection to this newspaper. One, Beka Lamb, is by the Belizean writer, Zee Edgell, who once worked as a sub-editor at The Gleaner.

The other, The Humming Bird Tree, is by Ian McDonald, Trinidadian/Guyanese, who regularly contributes op-ed pieces. Mr McDonald's book was made into a movie, a critically acclaimed love drama.

Another book highlighted for attention, based on a report in this newspaper on Monday, is Kestrel for a Knave, by an Englishman, Barry Hines, which has been in the curriculum for English literature of the United Kingdom's GCSE, the equivalent of the Caribbean Examinations Council's secondary schools exams.

These and all books with expletives, according to Mr Holness, will be removed from Jamaican schools, except in the case of sixth forms where, presumably, the students will be allowed to peek from the sanctuary of their privilege.

It appears to matter little to Mr Holness, or perhaps his advisers, the context within which words are used. There is almost a suggestion that a diet of gratuitous pornography is being fed to children.

But Zee Edgell's book, set in the 1950s, apart from being just a good read, is an exploration of social and class relationships and the peculiar ethnic and political tensions in colonial, English-speaking Central American territory surrounded by Spanish-speaking neighbours. The scholars may say, too, that it also addresses issues of feminism.

Mr McDonald writes about growing up in Trinidad in the 1940s and addresses some of the same themes as Ms Edgell: ethnic tensions, political identity and love relations.

Mr Hines' book, set in working-class Yorkshire, on the other side of the Atlantic from the Caribbean, confronts the issues faced by an under-privileged youngster in a dysfunctional home.

In each case, what the writers have done, and apparently missed by Mr Holness, is to exercise the creative imagination to tell a greater truth - one that is often far more complex and nuanced than can be handled by the mere literal-minded. It is to short-change our children to deny them the opportunity of this kind of engagement.

So, now it is these books, but where do you stop? Next it's Earl Lovelace's Dragon Can't Dance or Sam Selvon's Moses trilogy. A tome by Walter Rodney, perhaps?