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You’re reading Let Us Reach, a newsletter-blog for thinkers and doers, movers and shakers. I’m Madhu Narasimhan. I’m a founder, lawyer, and policy advisor based in San Francisco. In this newsletter, I share my work and professional/intellectual interests, including entrepreneurship & technology, law, politics & public policy, global affairs, and grassroots service. You might think of this space as “Silicon Valley x Washington, DC” (but we’ll sub out the unbridled pursuit of wealth, power, and exclusivity for some healthier vibes). :) You can read the full archive of essays, starting in May 2024, here.

“Let us reach for the world that ought to be—that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.” —Barack Obama

TODAY’S CONTENTS AT A GLANCE

As you get started today, I suggest clicking "Read Online” in the top-right corner in case your email provider clips the newsletter; the original formatting is better preserved that way. Here’s what we’ll cover today:

• The Essay: “Where Should You Raise Your Children?”

• Today’s Sponsor: beehiiv

• A Round-Up of My Recent Writing and Social Media Content

• Subscribe to My Other Newsletter: Narasimhan’s Persimmons, on Substack

• Recommendations: “The AI Policy Atlas”

A preview of next time: Earlier today, I wrote my next Let Us Reach essay, on the topic of writing and creating in the age of AI. I meant to include it as a short essay in today’s newsletter, but the draft ballooned and this installment is long enough as is, so I’ll wait for next time.

THE ESSAY

Where Should You Raise Your Children?

National rankings put Fremont, CA at #1. As a native, I say Fremont—and the Bay Area—still have some work to do to give our community’s children an ideal environment.

Earlier this month, The New York Times wrote about a recent study by WalletHub that ranks Fremont, CA—the Bay Area city where I was born and raised (and where my family still lives)—the #1 place in the country to raise children. WalletHub has shown Fremont a lot of love over the years; in addition to giving Fremont their prime accolade for child-rearing, they've also crowned Fremont ~the happiest city in America~ for 5 consecutive years now.

I have a nuanced set of thoughts on these lists. I, too, love Fremont for many, many reasons. So much so that I frequently host "Fremont Days" to share my most cherished highlights of the city with friends and colleagues from near and far.

But is the Fremont of today the happiest city in the country or the best place for a kid to grow up? I can examine a multitude of factors—from public safety to natural beauty—to make the affirmative case for both of those WalletHub titles, but in this essay, I want to focus on a couple of key areas where I think Fremont could improve with respect to providing an ideal environment for children to spend their formative years.

First, release kids from the pressure cooker.

Let’s start with Fremont's schools, as well as the messaging about life aspirations that many kids in the city imbibe from the adults around them. I'm a product of the public schools in Fremont, and I regularly mentor Fremont-based students. Meanwhile, my mom lives in Fremont and works at an elementary school here; my sister lives here; and my brother, also an alum of the public schools, leads a basketball academy (for K-12 students) headquartered here. We observe firsthand—and vigorously discuss and debate—the city’s educational environment with each other frequently. This much is clear to us and others who are intimately acquainted with the system: Fremont’s schools are home to many superb teachers/staff and these institutions certainly can deliver an excellent education, but they’ve also been known to be extraordinary pressure cookers for students (who are often seen lugging bulging suitcases of textbooks, sleep-deprived and anxiety-ridden as early as the 3rd grade). An intense focus on numerical indicators—GPAs and standardized test scores—though not a negative in and of itself, becomes corrosive when it starts to weaken the core intent of K-12 education: instilling a love of learning, equipping kids with the knowledge and tools they need to make sense of the world, and fostering warmth and kindness toward others.

Where is that much-coveted 4.0 GPA meant to lead? Both inside and outside of school, students are given the impression from an early age that their main goals in life should be to get into Stanford, become a doctor/lawyer/engineer/CEO, and be able to make enough to afford a $2+ million home in the Bay Area. (Good goals, but surely there's more to life than that?). The pursuits of prestige and economic ambition (driven at least in part by the ever-expanding cost of living here) are sometimes over-emphasized and relentless in the Bay Area—not only for kids but adults as well—and it can come at the cost of health, human connection, community, service to others, ethics, genuine learning, adventure, happiness, and finding deeper meaning. 

To put kids on the path to a hyper-specific definition of "success," and to accommodate parents' busy schedules at Silicon Valley jobs, Fremont kids' daily calendars are jam-packed to the brim with tutoring, violin lessons, and coding bootcamps (gotta launch that startup before college applications roll around in the 12th grade!). This leaves little time for open space, creative thinking, spontaneous play, nature, or just an afternoon popsicle with the neighbors. Though I will say, I do remember a time in my early childhood years in the 1990s in the Ardenwood area, when the neighborhood families encouraged us kids to indulge a little in the simple pleasures of life afterschool. A daily pick-up basketball game would break out on the Pistol Court cul-de-sac around 4pm, with the jingles of the ice cream truck approaching in the background, kids running and hollering all up and down the street. Nowadays, that same street is largely quiet whenever I drive by; the kids are tucked away inside, likely fretting about their upcoming organic chemistry exam. Increasingly, in 1:1 conversations, kids—and even adults—quietly share with me a sense of social isolation and loneliness that is often a saddening byproduct of tunnel vision and the academic/economic treadmills of the Valley suburbs. 

Keep diversity and broad exposure top-of-mind.

Adjacent to the topic of spending time with neighbors and finding community: I sometimes wonder if kids in Fremont are getting a wide enough aperture of racial and socioeconomic diversity in their ordinary day-to-day experience. 

To be sure, Fremont is deeply welcoming of immigrants (like my parents), and I'm eternally grateful that the city has endowed me with a profound sense of safety, comfort, and cultural fluency as an Indian-American and Asian-American. No doubt this is also true for many others who grew/grow up in Fremont. 

And there is, of course, a flourishing diversity of languages, cultures, and people (from Afghan refugees to Indian aunties donning saaris at Lake Elizabeth to the great-grandchildren of Japanese-Americans who were sent to internment camps during WWII) to be found within Fremont’s Asian-American community, which grew from around 7% in the year 1980 to now nearly two-thirds of the city. (Meanwhile, the white population declined from 85% to 18% in that same time period). Viewing the Asian-American community, comprised of over 40 nationalities, as a monolithic block—as the mainstream often tends to do—is reductionist and unhelpful. It would be a huge mistake, then, to say that there is no diversity in Fremont. 

However, on the other hand, consider that just ~3% of the community is Black and ~9% Hispanic. (An even more staggering point of reference: in my 2009 graduating class of over 600 students—at an institution ranked by U.S. News & World Report that year as the 36th best high school in the country, with parents routinely jostling to purchase homes within the designated zone of the city in order to secure their child’s seat—I think there were fewer than 10 Black students). 

Turning to socioeconomics: the median income in the city is now $169K, more than four times the national median. Take note of what The New York Times itself points out about WalletHub's study:

"One thing was clear in the results: the effects of income inequality. Cities at the top of the list had high median incomes and mostly white or Asian populations, while those at the bottom had low median incomes and mostly Black or Hispanic populations."

Wealthy cities and those that happen to be racially skewed often make the cut for these "best places to live" lists prepared by the media. But the resulting lists fail to capture the fact that children benefit tremendously—by ingraining lifelong learnings, cultivating empathy, and becoming the most cosmopolitan version of themselves—in making friends, at an early age, with kids who hail from very different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. There is something valuable lost in the absence of that kind of plural engagement. 

Now, don’t get me wrong…

WalletHub, in selecting Fremont for the top spot on its "Best & Worst Places to Raise a Family (2024)" list, cites "education and childcare" and "socioeconomics" as the variables of victory. And those are probably good rationales to put Fremont at the top of the list! (Side note: Fremont came in 78th place for the “family fun” variable). By and large, I agree that Fremont offers high-quality educational and childcare services, and that many families in the city have been given (or have worked hard to create for themselves) opportunities to attain economic success. 

And I hesitate to paint my arguments in broad brushstrokes. I don’t mean to suggest that every school and family in Fremont is encouraging a certain kind of milieu and a narrow set of life objectives for kids. Or to say that kids shouldn’t aspire to academic excellence and accomplishment. Or to ignore the fact that wider global trends (e.g., use of social media and devices) that aren’t particular to Fremont have played a significant role in how children spend their time nowadays versus when I was growing up—and in contributing to an epidemic of loneliness. Or to argue that families shouldn’t put down roots in areas of economic prosperity in order to give their kids the best possible opportunities. Or to suggest that the diversity of a community should be carefully calculated and artificially generated from the back room of a city council’s planning committee. Indeed, I'm not even necessarily disagreeing that the Fremont of today deserves to be at the top of these lists. It’s a fantastic city, I’m proud of my hometown, and as I noted at the start, I could easily present arguments for the affirmative case justifying WalletHub’s results.

So, what’s my point? This: I love Fremont—and we have more work to do.

What I am saying here is this: Fremont, this beautiful community of 230,000, shouldn't rest on its laurels when it views these annual rankings. The city still has more to think about in the months and years ahead. And the factors I've raised in this essay are not simply public policy issues for the city government alone to assess; they are fundamental questions about "what kind of society do we want to forge?"—questions that each person in the city, including children, young adults, and grown-ups, can thoughtfully consider in their spare time. 

And perhaps WalletHub's methodology too—though it is already trying to capture a range of important factors—can find more rigorous, reliable means for measuring a broader set of criteria (e.g., human connection, low stress levels), thereby encouraging cities to pursue outcomes that yield a happy, healthy base layer for their people, in addition to high levels of educational and economic attainment.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I adore Fremont. The city of my birth, upbringing, and family home is central to my identity. I want Fremont to continue to be #1 on these lists—but not just for the sake of continuing a years-long streak that gets featured in The New York Times, or so that the city's politicians can tout that they've done their job well. I want Fremont—and indeed, the broader Bay Area—to be the best it can be because I want children and families to be able to rely on a strong, well-rounded portfolio of factors that will contribute to their long-term happiness and well-being in this place we all call home. 

…

In the months ahead, I'll be writing more on what I call "the Bay Area Dream"—the great promise, as well as the challenges, of the communities and people of the Bay. If you have thoughts, stories, reading/listening/watching recommendations, or questions you’d like to share, I’d love to hear from you. 

TODAY’S SPONSOR

If you choose to click on the beehiiv links below, you’ll help fund my writing. :)

A ROUND-UP OF MY LATEST WRITING AND SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

From last time on Let Us Reach:

• Essay: The Categories of Entrepreneurship; Recommendations: Pico Iyer’s The Art of Stillness

From Narasimhan’s Persimmons, my Substack:

• Life Overview - and the daily fundamentals that I recommend setting up

• Life Overview: some deeper dives to examine your life

Plus, a selection of my recent LinkedIn posts:

• On the importance of deep reading

• The good old days are happening right now

• What I learned from Roger Federer’s epic commencement speech at Dartmouth

• Has your day gotten derailed? Here’s how to recover.

SUBSCRIBE TO MY OTHER NEWSLETTER

I have another newsletter you might be interested in: Narasimhan’s Persimmons, my Substack on life design, personal development, the pursuit of world-class performance (in the midst of the daily chaos we all experience), and all things life (beyond work). There, I’ll explore a range of personal blueprints, from meditation to building community in a new city to finding the best teahouses in the world. I’d love to have you as a reader there as well.

RECOMMENDATIONS

I recently came across “The AI Policy Atlas,” an introductory guide to AI policy (which the creators of the atlas loosely define as public policy as well as AI companies’ internal policies). The AI Policy Atlas is published on a Substack called AI Policy Perspectives, run by team members of Google DeepMind who are writing in their individual (rather than corporate) capacities.

The AI Policy Atlas is divided into four key areas that address the fundamental question of, “What topics do AI policy practitioners need to understand?”

1. The evolving AI ecosystem

2. The state of AI progress

3. The impact of AI on society

4. The AI policy response

You can then look through the sub-topics they’ve identified under each of those four areas. It’s not comprehensive (as the authors themselves admit), but it’s a nifty primer, I think—a way to outline and visualize the sprawling field of AI policy—not just for policy wonks, but anyone who’s trying to make sense of the societal implications of a technology that’s making dramatic advancements and reshaping our future with each passing day. 

After you’ve checked out the AI Policy Atlas, you can then delve into the rest of the Substack page, which includes monthly run-downs of AI policy issues, long-form essays, and reviews/commentaries on third-party works.

I’m not endorsing the substance of everything written on their Substack, but I think you’ll find it to be thought provoking. And I will say this: I’ve long dreamed of having these kinds of organized outlines (anyone who goes to law school ends up being low-key obsessed with outlines) at the public’s disposal for each area of public policy—from the economy to climate to even tech policy as a whole (with AI being a subset of that larger whole). I had previously envisioned these outlines as largely text-based Wikis, but I do like the form of a visually appealing atlas that enables you to ingrain a mental map of the entire field. Whatever the form may be, it’s nice to be able to get a 30,000-foot understanding of the myriad topics within each area of policy, and then zoom into each topic as desired. 

I’m always seeking out high-quality policy primers; feel free to send any recommendations my way, and I’ll also continue sharing.

Best wishes,

Madhu

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