drew52:relevant experience... those are the last 2 words of the sentence you quoted...
If I need to be more clear. If the YMCA Open Water program was so good they would not offer Open Water Diver 2, Advanced, Silver Advanced because our advanced isn't quite good enough, then .... etc and finally instructor. The divers should have all this stuff already and require no further training until such time as they have enough experience to enter into the instructor program.
If you believe PADI falls short then most agencies including YMCA fall well short of what you believe should be required.
Open Water 2 is merely the Open Water course with additional experience. It's issued instead of the Open Water card, not in addition to. The only extra charge is for the dives (assuming they are made from a boat).
AOW is the additional course, not Silver Advanced. Silver Advanced has been part of the program since before I started diving, although it was once called Silver Star Advanced. It's a much older course than AOW. I don't know why AOW was created, perhaps a misguided attempt to compete with PADI's AOW class? I believe it was a mistake and I have never taught the class. I've never advocated one class that teaches everything. I do advocate an Open Water class that enables someone to dive safely even when things go wrong. Most Open Water classes do not accomplish this. The YMCA class does. Is it perfect? No. Far from it, there are several things I think should be changed, but it's much better, IMO, than the PADI standards require their Open Water class to be.