residential school
a boarding school, especially one for delinquent or disabled children or youth: They recommended placing our daughter in a residential school for troubled teens.
(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.
Origin of residential school
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A similar argument holds for students needing extra support for one reason or another, such as children having lost one or more parents, children with disabilities, or those with behavioral issues who have run afoul of the law: a residential school , whether operated by the government, a charitable organization, or a for-profit business, offers these students more attention and care than can be provided in a standard school day.
In Canada, this argument found dark expression in residential schools specifically for Indigenous children. Although some of these schools were established as early as the 1700s, it was mainly from the 1870s to the 1960s that they were formally advanced as an effective means of inculcating Indigenous children with Christian beliefs and European cultural values by removing them from their homes and communities and providing 24-hour instruction and training. These schools used a curriculum completely disconnected from the traditional Indigenous way of life and typically punished the use of Indigenous languages. Because the schools were often very far from the students’ homes, many children did not see their parents for years at a time, and some never. Moreover, abysmal conditions and rampant verbal, physical, and sexual abuse caused enormous suffering at many of the schools; thousands of children died (some buried in mass graves with their deaths unreported), and many survivors were scarred for life.
The system of residential schools wound down in the 1970s, and the last one finally closed in 1997. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission acknowledged that the operation of these schools had amounted to cultural genocide. The term residential school consequently has horrific associations in Canada, especially among Indigenous people, and is not used for other kinds of boarding schools.
hostel schools were a later phenomenon in Canada (mainly in the 1950s to 1970s); since they were fewer and confined to the far north, the term is less well-known. These were day schools attended also by non-Indigenous children, but Indigenous students were removed from their own communities and housed near the school in separate residences called hostels , with the aim of forcing cultural assimilation.
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Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use residential school in a sentence
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.
Statue of the Queen Toppled as Canadians Protest the Mass Graves of Indigenous Children | Jamie Ross | July 2, 2021 | The Daily BeastPratt’s MaximCanada’s system of residential schools for First Nations children has its roots in America’s Indigenous boarding schools.
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.
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.
Renewed calls for Catholic Church apology after mass grave of Indigenous children found in Canada | Rebecca Falconer | May 30, 2021 | AxiosThe pandemic sent his residential school in Massachusetts into lockdown last March.
But the child in the residential school knows little of all this, has little occasion to know.
Five Lectures on Blindness | Kate M. FoleyOne day, when we were walking through a residential school, we were struck by the spectacle of a poor epileptic.
Mentally Defective Children | Alfred Binet
British Dictionary definitions for residential school
(in Canada) a boarding school maintained by the Canadian government for Indian and Inuit children from sparsely populated settlements
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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