Donald McLean
Donald (Don) McLean was a Broken Hill school teacher and headmaster who became an educationalist and author, publishing and lecturing internationally on progressive education, and publishing books on schooling, parenting and child development.
Don McLean was born in Broken Hill in 1905, the third child of Neil McLean, an insurance agent, and Mary Winifred. At the age of seven he lost his left arm in an accident involving a detonator, but this did not diminish his drive or ambition, or what was later described as his ‘striking personality’. He attended Broken Hill Superior Public School and then Broken Hill High School and, between 1922-23, he trained as a primary school teacher at Teacher’s College in Sydney.
After several minor postings – in Coogee in Sydney, then back to Broken Hill and then Milparinka, he took a position at Broken Hill North Public School in 1924, where he stayed until 1935. In 1930 he married fellow schoolteacher Kathleen Thelma Arthur.
From North Public School he was transferred to teach at Curlwaa primary school, a small town some 270km south of Broken Hill. Curlwaa was on the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers, and here Don came into closer contact with the stark beauty of the far west country which he later wrote about fondly and knowledgeably.
Between 1939-1955 he was headmaster at some of Sydney’s largest schools. His last appointment was at Darlinghurst, which in the 1950s and 60s was an underprivileged area. It seemed a natural move to then take a position with the Child Welfare Department, then the Department of Education before he semi-retired in 1965.
Don McLean published extensively on education, presenting thoughtful and well-informed arguments on the importance of developing a child’s emotional life and character as well as their intellect. He was an outspoken supporter of balancing creative and aesthetic work with academic work, though his progressive and holistic views were not always popular. Along with books on education and textbooks on teaching English, social studies and Australian history, McLean published two novels in the 60s: The Roaring Days (1960) and Treasure from the Earth (1963), inspired by the years he was in Curlwaa.
As the Sydney Morning Herald education correspondent between 1965-75, and president of the New Education Fellowship, Don McLean attended international conferences on education and was on the executive council of the World Education Fellowship. He visited and lectured in Europe, the U.S., South Africa and South Asia, and was actively involved in progressive education until he died in 1975.
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