According to National Geographic:

"interviews with 18- to 24-year-olds were conducted using an in-home, in-person methodology."

Excludes the homeless and incarcerated.

"All interviews were conducted using a "representative" sample of young adults."

Doesn't say whether it was a random sample or if the participants were "chosen" as representative.

Don't mind me. When it comes to statistics if there are figures that don't seem right, I like to see where they came from.

I agree with you about geography performance not being the best measure of education in our country, but the Afghanistan question may be an indicator of the level of interest our kids take in world affairs and politics. And it doesn’t look good.

Geography lets us know where we are on the planet. We can always look on a map.

I'd like to see them do an Astronomy survey to see how many kids (or adults for that matter) know where we are in the universe.

(Argentina threw me for a bit, until I remembered the Falklands War.)