Education Quote by Tharman Shanmugaratnam

Tharman’s line is a quietly political argument dressed up as common sense: the idea that longevity is only a burden if society insists on treating older people as spent. By pairing “keep learning” with “keep contributing”, he sidesteps the sentimental “active aging” trope and lands on a harder premise: economic relevance and civic worth can be extended, and that extension can be engineered.

The key move is the way “technologies” gets cast not as a threat (automation, displacement) but as an enabling infrastructure. That’s strategic. In a world where tech is often framed as making workers obsolete, Tharman flips the script: digital tools can turn late life into a productive phase, not a retirement holding pen. It’s optimism with an agenda, aimed at reshaping how voters, employers, and policymakers think about skills, labor, and age.

The subtext is demographic math. Singapore, like much of Asia and Europe, faces a rapidly aging population, rising healthcare costs, and a shrinking worker base. Read in that context, “stay active” is not just lifestyle advice; it’s a policy direction: lifelong training, redesigned jobs, flexible work, and a social contract that rewards reskilling rather than punishing age.

Notice what’s carefully avoided: talk of “dependency”, “entitlements”, or “cutbacks”. Instead, the rhetoric recruits dignity as the selling point. If people can “keep contributing”, then longer lives become a national asset, and reform becomes easier to swallow because it sounds like empowerment, not austerity.