Well, the votes are in, and we have a movie to show on the last day of middle school. Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions. We had a fairly large number of suggestions, so the first thing I did was throw out all of the movies that I didn’t want to see. Then I threw out all of the movies that were over 110 minutes long. Then I decided that, since I had already gone to all the trouble to figure out the run time for each movie, I should put up a web page so that other people didn’t have to do the same thing. It’s been up for a few days, and people are already visiting the 50 Best Movies for Middle School page. That actually took a few days, so, when I finally got back to the task at hand, I found I still had a couple of movies too many for the ballot that I wanted…
We did an Instant Runoff Election. As a former libertarian, I knew about alernative voting methods, but didn’t have any experience with them. This method is simple enough that we could do it manually during Codes & Ciphers club. The final outcome was decided by one vote, and we had to throw one ballot out (hanging chad) that would have resulted in a tie. The kids really liked that.
Here’s the final order:
9th place: High School Musical — Last choice for over half of the students
8th place: Labyrinth — No one had heard of it
7th place: Sky High
6th place: Clue
5th place: Enchanted
4th place: The Princess Bride — This movie really needs a different name
3rd place: Edward Scissorhands
2nd place: The Sandlot — Most 1st place votes
1st place: Secondhand Lions — Most 2nd & 3rd place votes