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

For much of her childhood, Alison lived at a residential school for children with complex physical disabilities.

From BBC • Sep. 6, 2024

“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

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

The child in a residential school knows very little of life outside the buildings, knows little of the trials and struggles going on in its own home, perhaps.

From Five Lectures on Blindness by Foley, Kate M.