When I was last doing homebrewing 10 years ago, the standard method was to measure a small amount of the sugar into each bottle for priming, and to rack directly from the secondary into the bottles. I would rather not risk contamination and oxidization by putting the beer into a 'bottling bucket'. However, there is no way to mix the sugar into the secondary without stirring up the yeast. So sugar into each bottle seems a better way to do this. What do you think?
You got it wrong in your thinking, first it's much easier to get a controlled carbonation to style by mixing in the bottling bucket, it is nearly impossible to get the same amount of loose sugar crystals into each individual bottle.
Actually, if you look at the history of homebrewing, most bottle bombs came from priming individual bottles, because that was how it was done throughout the history of early homebrewing even up to the 1970's when it was legalized. . Because you really can't accurately measure sugar and easily get it in the bottle with those tools, and even one or two grains can be too much sugar. Plus adding dry sugar to wet beer can much more easily lead to inconsistant carbonation as some of the sugar my clump and not easily dissolve, and just sit in the bottom of the bottle, it is much better to boil it up and prime bulk. Additional there is a further risk of bottle bombs by dry priming sugar in bottles, and that is due to sanitization....especially if you grab your sugar right out of the sugar jar at home, boiling the sugar in water actually sterilizes it.
Back in the day it wasn't just one rare bottle that blew up, but
entire cases, sounding like a string of firecrackers going of, BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM...you get the idea....
Bulk priming is much more precise and sanitary than your old way....
additionally your fear of oxydation is waaaaay overblown, if it were so bad for brewing, if it was such a big risk of that sort of thing, do you
really think Palmer, Papazian and all the other books would be showing how to rack a beer to a bottling bucket?
If you rack carefully, there is no need to worry about stuff like that.
There is a brief discussion about this between me and another brewer from yesterday here...
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-oxygen-problem-214808/#post2514469