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ANSWER:
No. Sight words are definitely necessary and important to know; however, students should not rely on sight word knowledge alone. It would be very difficult to expect a child to learn every word purely from memorization....and without phonics that is what the case would be.
For the better part of the 1990's, a reading philosophy called "Whole Language" was widely used in which phonics was basically eliminated. Eventually, "Whole Language" acquired a poor reputation because as children progressed through the grades it was disheartening to see that they did not possess the skills to attack unknown words. Phonics gives students the ability to address unknown words by using phonics features and syllabication rules.
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