A test of college freshmen's knowledge of American history showed students know "the high points" of U.S. history but few of the details, Bernard Bailyn, Winthrop Professor of History and one of four historians who worked on the study, said yesterday.

The first portion of the study, conducted by The New York Times, was published in the Times yesterday.

The test, administered to 1856 college freshmen at 194 colleges, showed that new "conceptual" or "thematic" methods of teaching history in secondary schools may leave gaps in a student's education, C. Vann Woodward, Sterling Professor of History at Yale who worked with Bailyn, said yesterday.

The study "may have a reforming effect on school curricula," Woodward said.

Bailyn and Woodward said it was difficult to apply the test results to more selective schools such as Harvard.

"Yale and Harvard aren't quite typical," Woodward said.

Stephan Thernstrom, professor of History and instructor of Soc Sci 3, "The Central Themes of American History", said yesterday, "It's hard to tell what they [the students in the course] know when they begin but they work hard, read lots of books and develop the knowledge."

None of the historians were sure whether any Harvard students were included in the test sample.

Although the question "Which business leader pioneered the mass-production assembly line?" (Henry Ford) was answered correctly by 92 per cent of the respondents, the students' knowledge of the Constitution was weaker.

Only 28 per cent of the students knew that the federal Constitution explicitly authorized the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.