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.

---

residential school British  

noun

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

---

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

She and her husband Morgan, 42, are now facing the difficult decision of whether to send Evie to a residential school.

From BBC • Oct. 13, 2023

"In the indigenous community, we're very familiar with residential school history. It isn't news to us," Goulet, the Cree-Métis filmmaker, told Salon in a recent phone interview.

From Salon • Aug. 9, 2023

The issue of the Vatican’s ethnographic collection came into the spotlight last year, when Indigenous groups from Canada came to the Vatican to receive an apology from Pope Francis for Canada’s church-run residential school system.

From Seattle Times • Mar. 16, 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.