Donald McLean was born and grew up in Broken Hill, New South Wales (NSW). Incidents from his boyhood are fictionalised in his first novel No Man Is an Island (1955). After training at Sydney Teachers' College, he spent most of his adult life as a teacher in Sydney, and for some time was headmaster of Bankstown School (amongst others), which in 1955 was the largest school in the southern hemisphere. He became well known as an educationist, writing and editing numerous texts on educational policies and methods. He was, in fact, the editor of all the publications of the NSW Department of Education in the 1960s, as well as being educational correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald from 1965 to 1975. His most influential books on education were The Education of the Personality (1952) and Children in Need (1956). His other educational books include Speaking and Writing English (1948), Our Living History (1956), Finding Out About Australian History (1959), We Explore the World (1960), Finding Out About the Ancient World (1961), It's People That Matter (1969), Venturing the Unknown Ways (1965) and Your Child and the School (1968).
