Philip Butterfield, the chief executive officer of Bank of Bermuda HSBC, has long been a role model for Bermudians.

Largely as a result of his own hard work, he has risen to the top of the Island's most important local financial institution, which is both a major employer and a critical part of the Bermuda economy.

Prior to that, he worked his way through the ranks of Citibank before returning to Bermuda.

His service has not ended there. He is chairman of the Hospitals Charitable Trist, which is responsible for raising money for the new hospital among other boards.

He was chairman of the Board of Education for some years, and more recently, he agreed to chair the interim board tasked with implementing the education reforms recommended in the Hopkins Report – a report that was led by one of HSBC's leading education consultants and was in part funded by HSBC.

Mr. Butterfield could have sat in his corner office and simply run the bank; that would have been enough work for most people. But he has instead given a great deal of time and effort to the community.

It might be suggested that he has only done so because he is the brother of Premier Dr. Ewart Brown. That would be unfair. The fact is that he has given up enormous amounts of time with the goal of improving Bermuda, and is part of the consensus that that can only be accomplished if educational standards are raised.

However, this newspaper has, almost since the Hopkins recommendations were laid out, emphasised the importance of ensuring that all stakeholders in education, including parents, principals, teachers and employers, need to be brought into the debate on both the need for improvement and on how that can be accomplished.

Those suggestions, made not just by this newspaper, but by trade unions and others, have been largely ignored. Indeed, for all the hard work that the interim committee has put in – and it is a lot of hard work – other stakeholders have essentially been told to put up and shut up.

Mr. Butterfield's appearance before the select committee on education last week demonstrated that attitude all too graphically.

Mr. Butterfield essentially said that teachers were employees of the system who should do as they were told.

He publicly belittled the Bermuda Union of Teachers general secretary, Michael Charles, to an extent that has rarely been seen in this community.

Mr. Charles was only a PE teacher, and as such should be ignored, Mr. Butterfield said, apparently unaware of some of the other one-time PE teachers who have held Ministerial Office – and even been Premiers – in the past and present.

Indeed, one wonders how Derrick Burgess, who was "only a waiter" before he became president of the Bermuda Industrial Union and later a Cabinet Minister, must have felt when he read those words about a fellow trade unionist.

It must be said that Mr. Charles has been remarkably gracious in his responses. Again, one wonders how Chris Furbert, the president of the BIU, and "only a dockworker", might have responded if he was demeaned in the same way by an employer.

The BUT, by contrast to Mr. Charles, has been less sympathetic, and has called for Mr. Butterfield's resignation, on the basis that it cannot now work with him when he has made his feelings about Mr. Charles and teachers in general clear.

This newspaper has never maintained that all teachers are perfect and has supported the Hopkins Report's recommendations for more accountability and higher standards. Nor has it always agreed with the BUT.

But in this case, it is clear that Mr. Butterfield, for all the good he has done, has made his position untenable through his own words. Instead of being someone who can lead education reform, he is now an obstacle to it, and should resign or be fired for the sake of the education system.