residential school

[ rez-i-den-shuhl skool, rez-i-den-shuhl skool ]

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. Compare hostel school ( def 1 ), Indian boarding school ( def ).

residential school

noun

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of residential school¹

First recorded in 1875–80

Example Sentences

In recent weeks, over 1,000 unmarked graves for Indigenous children have been discovered at former residential schools in Canada—and a wave of anger is sweeping over the nation as it confronts its dark past.

From The Daily Beast

Pratt’s MaximCanada’s system of residential schools for First Nations children has its roots in America’s Indigenous boarding schools.

From Ozy

South of the Canadian border, hundreds and perhaps thousands of children are believed to have died in church- and government-run residential schools in the 19th and 20th centuries.

From Ozy

An Indigenous Canadian group announced plans Saturday to identify the remains of 215 children, some as young as three, found buried at the site of a former residential school, per CBC News.

From Axios

The pandemic sent his residential school in Massachusetts into lockdown last March.

From Quartz

But the child in the residential school knows little of all this, has little occasion to know.

From Project Gutenberg

One day, when we were walking through a residential school, we were struck by the spectacle of a poor epileptic.

From Project Gutenberg