Generativity Three: guardianship comes in several forms, especially if one is prone to judgement and criticism. One can be a critical guardian by standing at the gate and preventing those who are un-deserving or foes from entering through the gate and joining those who dwell in the temple (community). Alternatively, one can be a guardian like Jeremiah in the Old Testament (Torah) who enters the temple and offers passionate and telling criticism of those occupying the temple and especially its leaders. In both cases, one is protecting the values and aspirations of a specific temple or community. Rey Carr operated more like Jeremiah than the gate keeper (though we will see that he did a bit of reverse gatekeeping when he tried to keep the gate open for some of his fellow Canadian coaches).
Here are a few of the Jeremiah-like critiques he offered in The Future of Coaching about the status of professional coaching during the early 2010s. He is referencing trends identified by Jan Newcomb and himself in several publications. Specifically, Rey identified six trends that he thought could bring about the end of coaching:
. . . the glut of coaches; the creation of niche coaching, the proliferation of credentialing schemes, the influx of parasites, the misnamed practices, and the exclusionary practices of coaching organizations.
Rey doesn’t just stop here. He points to the dynamics operating on behalf of coach’s demise:
Download Article 1K Club[The negative trends] are the result of the work of a relatively small group, but they appear to be having an impact on the general public as more and more cultural observers describe coaching practices in cynical or critical fashion, and the previous esteem and confidence accorded coaching by the public appears to be diminishing.
