Without an example of the text in question it’s a pretty unanswerable stereotype, but it’s possible. US literacy rate is an extremely complex topic, but it’s overall been trending up (until kids were kneecapped by COVID) and US advanced literacy tends to be heavily siloed towards jargon shaped by the prevailing regional industry with little mixing between areas. It’s a fascinating topic, really. Mild criticism for OP, as they’re kinda basing their complaint on the idea that MSV is exclusively what is taught in the US; this hasn’t been the case for decades. While they’re absolutely right that MSV as an exclusive method for learning to read is a horrible approach, it’s a very useful skill for inferring meaning from context, especially when combined with a foundation built on the standard vocab+definition+phonics framework.