Final answer:
The best statement indicating a negative correlation between TV watching and exam grades is that excessive TV leads to poor performance. Individual effort and competition, which drive student success, can be undermined by collectivist grading, leading to grade inflation.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that best illustrates a negative correlation between the number of hours spent watching TV the week before an exam and the grade on that exam is: Watching too much television leads to poor exam performance. This implies that as the number of hours watching TV increases, the likelihood of obtaining a higher grade on the exam decreases.
When it comes to student performance, factors such as attendance, ability, and work ethic are critical. In a competitive grading system, where success is stratified similarly to capitalist principles, a bad test grade can indeed demote you from being the top in your class. However, if grades are distributed according to a collectivist or communist model where everyone is given a 'C' due to an average grade of 75%, individual performance is not reflected in the grade, potentially leading to a lack of incentive and a decline in overall performance, as seen in grade inflation.