A senior Indian Affairs official from Canada who was working on his doctorate in educational psychology at Stanford enlisted Richard King and two other students to do field work in Native schools in British Columbia, hoping thereby to collect data he could use to promote his campaign to indigenize and inject more local control into Native schooling. King spent a year at Carcross as senior teacher in a participant-observer experiment that resulted in his doctoral dissertation. When published as The School at Mopass, his observations about the stultifying atmosphere and lack of either academic or vocational success at the institution helped further to undermine the credibility of residential schooling.

      Two inquiries that the federal government sponsored also heaped criticism on residential schools. The 'Hawthorn Report,' a massive survey of the economic, political, and educational needs of Indians, was issued after exhaustive research by a team of social scientists in 1966-7.

      About the same time as Hawthorn's group were conducting their investigation, Indian Affairs commissioned a study of the nine residential schools in Saskatchewan by a team under George Caldwell, a childcare specialist with the Canadian Welfare Council. Caldwell's team found that the schools were highly regimented, did not provide sufficient non-academic instruction, prepared children poorly for adjustment to the outside world, and were inadequately funded. What seemed to stun the investigators was their discovery that in spite of the all-pervasive clerical atmosphere and the heavy reliance on religious instruction, 'the children do not seem to be identifying themselves with the religion.'

      Although some missionaries were harshly critical of Caldwell, their comments were largely irrelevant. The Oblates in particular damned the Caldwell report, contending that its bad research design and inappropriate Saskatchewan sample was evidence that its real purpose was justification of policy intentions rather than production of results on which program decisions were to be made. Ottawa sailed on heedless of all such criticisms. By the time Caldwell's Indian Residential Schools was released in 1967, the department was committed to phasing out the residential institutions in favour of hostels. Although Indian Affairs would have its way in closing most residential schools and shifting their population to hostels and nearby day schools, in a few instances it would be frustrated.