Fewer than a third of high-school seniors know that the subject of the Camp David accords was peace between Israel and Egypt. Barely 40 per cent knew why the pilgrims came to America, or that Great Britain leaned toward supporting the Confederacy in the American Civil War because the South supplied cotton.

The knowledge of lower-grade pupils was only slightly better, according to a nationwide test set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It discovered 57 per cent of high-school seniors tested did not have even basic knowledge of the history of the United States. Only 11 per cent of the 16 to 18-year-olds were judged proficient and fewer than 2 per cent scored at the advanced level.

US education secretary Richard Riley said: “It’s clear, as the song says, students don’t know much about history,” quoting Wonderful World, a Sam Cooke hit from the 1960s. “This test says, when measured against high standards, our children don’t know enough.”

Fewer than one in 10 fourth- graders could identify an important event in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was being drafted there. Only three in 10 knew that New York was one of the original 13 colonies that fought the American Revolution.

Noralee Frankel, assistant director in charge of education at the American Historical Association, said: “History best taught broadens a student’s outlook about the world around them. It helps explain politics, it gives deeper meaning to current events and it helps students to think analytically and conceptually.” Ms Frankel said more resources should be put into training history teachers, but, instead, there have been cutbacks.

The test results give ammunition to conservative candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, who have been complaining that proposed new standards for history education slight George Washington and other heroes in favour of embarrassments such as racism and anti-communist hysteria.

* Colorado, frustrated by the social and financial costs of forcing recalcitrant children to attend school, will consider next month becoming the first American state to end compulsory attendance.

Lawmakers say schools are spending too much energy on students who do not want to be there, and who disrupt their classmates’ education. But others argue that the state is simply giving up on children still too young to make decisions for themselves.

Colorado State Representative Russell George, who proposed the bill that would repeal all the state’s compulsory attendance laws, said: “The question is, are we doing what we ought to be doing in the public classroom, when you have all of these kids forced in there who don’t want to be?” American compulsory attendance laws vary. Of the 50 states, 32 require children to attend school until the age of 16, eight states until the age of 17, and 10 states until the age of 18. In Colorado, children have to go to school from seven to 16.

Mr George said: “Why aren’t we getting a better result out of our public education? Teachers will tell you: they often have to teach to the lowest common denominator, which is usually a person who just doesn’t want to be there.”

Not everyone agrees - including Mr George’s wife, herself a teacher. “She worries about the parents who don’t care, and if the kids don’t have to come by law, they’d say, ‘So what? Who cares?’” he said.

Mr George also proposes widening the number of vocational education programmes and other alternatives available to students who don’t like school. The other option, he said, is to accept the truancy committee’s recommendations - expanding the power of police to force reluctant children into school, for instance, and giving judges more authority to punish truants.