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Yes they are. Kids in lower schools are generally not taught how to read or write well at all. When they do read books, the books are either distilled into key ideas in class (so you don't really have to read them aside from the occasional quiz) or very easy reading material. When they write, it's usually a "5-paragraph" essay that is more about regurgitating the distilled points than any form of original thought. That is, if they don't cheat on the essay.

I recently did an MBA program (yes, pile on the hate) where the average student I worked with had a very hard time reading complex documents or stringing together sentences to form a coherent argument. They even struggled to read reports from consulting companies, which are full of pictures and written in very plain grammar, so I doubt most could tackle "Ulysses," "The Wasteland," or "The Scarlet Letter."

By the way, I think this is why the PG writing style is popular - it's very easy to understand the words and sentences, so you can convey an idea to a lot of people, albeit in a not-very-nuanced way. It also makes it fairly easy to write an argument - there is no flowery language around to distract you from the fact that you are saying nothing.

A lot of people attribute this to the fact that there are a lot of people who have English as a second language or speak a different dialect of English (Indian English is very common), but I'm not so sure. I have often found that many non-native speakers actually have larger vocabularies and a better understanding of grammar than typical native speakers.