"Children need more geography field trips. Schools should organize geography field trips to stop pupils from sitting before computer screens for a long time. And children should be encouraged to see the natural world and study geography," says Michael Palin. The famous actor and writer, Michael Palin, made the comments days after a study showed that pupils in the UK were less likely to take part in science field trips than in most other developed countries. The study found that 13% of schools in the UK failed to take children out of the classroom regularly. Mr. Palin said that field trips were an important part of geography and that he was interested in geography because he had a good geography teacher and he had many opportunities to "get out of the school building". In an interview, Mr. Palin said, "It was important for children to see things for themselves and learn about the rest of the world. You have to show them a mountain, show them a factory, show them a power station." Mr. Palin had been to the North and South Poles, the Himalayas , the Sahara and Eastern Europe. "Geography is about the study of the earth. It is a _ subject," he said. "It's related to everything we do: what we eat, what transport we take to work, where we live, what houses are made of, and so on." He said children needed to get basic geography knowledge first and that once they had the basic knowledge they could move on to deeper problems, such as population and pollution. "Today's children will need to deal with a lot of problems when they grow up. They have to learn geography today," he said. The study showed that   _
about 10% of British schools didn't organize field trips regularly many British students were not interested in geography some geography teachers didn't do a good job students who studied geography seldom went out of the school building