"Every day, 40 teen-age girls give birth to their third child," Mr. Hodkinson [of the Institute for Educational Leadership] said, "and to be the third child of a child is to be very much at risk." Many of these babies, and others born in poverty [in the United States] are premature and of low birthweight, which Mr. Hodkinson says, is a good predictor of learning difficulties. About 700,000 of the 3.3 million babies born each year in this country "are almost assured of being either educationally retarded or difficult to teach."