residential school

American  

[rez-i-den-shuhl skool, rez-i-den-shuhl skool] / ˌrɛz ɪˈdɛn ʃəl ˌskul, ˈrɛz ɪˌdɛn ʃəl ˈskul /

noun

1. a boarding school, especially one for delinquent or disabled children or youth.

   They recommended placing our daughter in a residential school for troubled teens.

2. (formerly) one of a network of boarding schools in Canada for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis students, typically founded and operated by a church or religious order and eventually receiving partial or full funding by the federal government.

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residential school British  

noun

1. (in Canada) a boarding school maintained by the Canadian government for Indian and Inuit children from sparsely populated settlements

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Etymology

Origin of residential school

First recorded in 1875–80

Example Sentences

“Sugarcane” tells a story — many stories — happening everywhere in Canada, about what is being done, and still going unsaid, regarding the trauma inflicted on Indigenous people by the white-settled country’s residential school system.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 18, 2024

“Sugarcane,” a sobering community portrait directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, tracks the fallout from the Roman Catholic Church’s residential school for Indigenous children in Canada by tracing generational trauma.

From New York Times • Jan. 28, 2024

Ms Clayton, a residential school survivor herself, said the return of the pole feels like its own form of reconciliation.

From BBC • Oct. 1, 2023

It references a real orange shirt taken from boarding school survivor Phyllis Webstad on her first day at St. Joseph’s Mission residential school in Williams Lake, B.C.

From Seattle Times • Sep. 30, 2023

In this way there is no break in the family relation and the child does not grow indifferent to home ties, as so often happens when he is sent to a residential school.

From Five Lectures on Blindness by Foley, Kate M.