I agree with the sight word BS, but fail to see the kudzu connection.
I learned phonics when I was in school, but I’m almost 60 years old. Things were different back then.
You probably had a teacher that taught phonics on the side.
“Anyone who learned to read in the last century got at least a taste of phonics, but the Dick and Jane stories actually were a calculated attack on phonics: The authors believed children learned to read best by memorizing a small handful of “sight words” and repeating them over and over the “look/say” method. “
Both are useless parasites. It’s just a way of dramatizing that sight-words are a hindrance.
(I write a lot of articles about sight-words because our public schools keep teaching them. I’m always looking for another way to explain the problem.)