If a middle-schooler stands over six-foot-three, he doesn't join a club for unusually tall kids. But, given even a moderate level of athleticism, he can pretty easily excel on the volleyball and basketball teams. So when we celebrate athletics, we're largely celebrating innate qualities. Why can't we do the same for intellectual achievement?
My high school yearbook featured the "royal courts" of the prom and homecoming dances. It also contained a page on the Miss Teen [city] pageant, in which several students of my school competed, and one was crowned victor. That's all a celebration of beauty, isn't it?
Anyway, I think all this is really missing the point about yearbooks. They're not for us, they're for the kids. They're for reminiscence. That means it's perfectly reasonable to include any groups, with pictures, so the kids can look back and see their peers in those particular groups. If you did include the sports teams but not the gifted class, what kind of message are you sending? To me, the only fair way to do it is to either include ALL, or include none.
Ultimately, the reader is simply presented with, "Here is a club, here's what they did, and here's their picture." Anything else anyone takes out of it is basically baggage they brought in.
