Stang,

The Ragland technique is a method of flight instruction that uses neither the buddy box or passing the tx.

Here is a link to Clarence Raglands website, if you go to the bottom you can click on a link that explains the method in detail. He has taught hundreds of people to fly using this method, myself included.

I was never on the buddy box, so I can't honestly compare the two directly, however this method does work. I was able to solo with 4 hours of total instruction, which also included a little time on a heli.

http://www.kites.org/rc_instructors/