What was going on when I was born?

The Reagan Administration, spurred by a new Federal appeals court order, is considering asking the Supreme Court to decide whether racially discriminatory private schools are entitled to tax exemptions, White House officials said today. The Federal appeals court here, in a unanimous ruling issued late Thursday, temporarily barred the Administration from granting exemptions to such schools, which number in the hundreds. The White House officials confirmed that, among other options, the Administration was weighing the possibility of extricating itself from a politically damaging morass by asking the Supreme Court to consider another case on the same question. Significant Shift Could Result Such a move would be a significant step back from the Administration's original position that the Supreme Court should not decide the pending case and that previous Federal court decisions denying exemptions were improper exercises in judicial activism.

Alex Chatman, the first black to be elected a county administrator in South Carolina, has his own ways of knowing that hard times have returned to Williamsburg County. ''The population of the jail has tripled, even though there has been no increase in serious crime,'' he said. ''People get themselves arrested on some minor violation so they can get a meal or two, and I can prove that.'' Williamsburg County, a prime generator of poverty throughout most of the nation's history, had seen some better years in the past decade. Now, however, it abounds with stories of a return to the kind of hardships that caused a mass migration of poor people from its farms and towns to Northern cities for most of the century.

The United States Ambassador to El Salvador has asked the Reagan Administration to permit American military advisers there to carry rifles as well as pistols for personal protection, State and Defense Department officials said today. This recommendation, the officials said, was made by the Ambassador, Deane R. Hinton, in a message to Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. in the last few days. Officials said the Ambassador was concerned lest a United States soldier be killed or wounded because he lacked sufficient protection. Issue Is Under Study The question is being studied by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and by officials in the State Department, which has primary jurisdiction over United States activities in El Salvador, the officials said. They said they did not know when a decision would be made.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, has let its oil production slide about 500,000 barrels a day, to a level between 7 million and 7.5 million barrels a day, oil analysts and traders said yesterday. Since November, the Saudis have cut production by 3 million to 3.5 million barrels daily. Output is now at the lowest level in three years. The cuts are seen as a direct response to the current worldwide oversupply of crude oil, variously estimated at between two million and three million barrels a day. Also in reaction to the oversupply, the Standard Oil Company (Ohio) yesterday cut the selling price of oil produced on the Alaskan North Slope by up to $2.27 a 42-gallon barrel, and Exxon confirmed that it had reduced the wholesale price of heating oil, kerosene and diesel fuel by 5 cents to 6 cents a gallon.

Even as they try to cope with inflation, Federal budget cuts and declining enrollments, many of the nation's best-known universities find themselves faced with deciding how to spend the millions of dollars that is becoming available for television rights to their major sports events. No one can predict with any confidence how much money will be raised now that cable and pay-for-view television have begun to compete with the networks to show football and basketball games. But those connected with sports, television and academia do not doubt that a huge windfall is on the horizon. 'A Grave Matter of Concern' The question of how that money should be used is pitting university administrators against their athletic directors, male coaches against their female counterparts and the big football and basketball schools against those that place less emphasis on sports. ''It's a grave matter of concern,'' said Stephen Horn, president of California State University at Long Beach. ''It's a type of endeavor where a lot of mischief can occur, and not only mischief but undue influence as well.''

Mayor Koch changed his mind yesterday and said he had decided against adding a biblical inscription to the so-called Isaiah Wall as a protest against the United Nations across the street on First Avenue. ''I wouldn't call it backing down,'' Mr. Koch said after having talked about his search for a biblical quotation in interviews and news conferences over the last 10 days. ''Silence,'' he said, ''sometimes is more effective than a shout,'' adding: ''It would be even more effective if the portion of the wall upon which the inscription would have appeared would remain blank.''

Senator Bob Dole, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, today in effect halted one of the most disputed aspects of last year's sweeping tax cut: the sale of unused business tax credits that would have cost the Treasury more than $3 billion in revenue by early fall. In an unusual action, he announced that he would move to repeal or alter the so-called tax leasing provision in the Economic Recovery Act of 1981, passed by Congress last August. He said the changes or repeal of this provision would be retroactive to Saturday. ''Corporations entering into leasing deals after today do so at their own risk,'' the Kansas Republican asserted.

Pope John Paul II indicated today that he disagreed with President Reagan's imposition of sanctions against Poland in response to the martial-law crackdown there. Returning home from his eight-day West African trip, the Pope, looking fit and relaxed, strolled among the correspondents at the rear of his special plane answering their questions. Asked whether he agreed with Mr. Reagan's sanctions policy, he replied in English: ''I am convinced that President Reagan has his own political reasons, and I should not and I ought not enter his political reasons, his political motivation. I have presented my pastoral and also my patriotic motivation.''

Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Times of London and The Sunday Times, said tonight that he would definitely close the two papers on Monday unless an agreement was reached on voluntary work force reductions. The Australian-born publisher has been losing millions of dollars on the two papers and has said repeatedly that at least 600 jobs must be cut immediately.

When Zimbabwe became independent 22 months ago, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe had an absolute majority in Parliament but Joshua Nkomo still had one of the country's two guerrilla armies under arms. Thus a possible alternative to a political compact was renewed civil war. That risk had greatly receded by the time the Prime Minister dismissed Mr. Nkomo, who was Minister Without Portfolio, and three of his supporters from the Cabinet this week, but it had not entirely vanished. The danger is that the political purge, provoked by the discovery of buried weapons on a farm controlled by Mr. Nkomo and elements of his minority Patriotic Front, could lead in a chain reaction to a renewal of tensions and possibly even conflict between the two factions of former guerrillas that have been merged to form Zimbabwe's new national army. Slightly more than one-third of the 60,000 troops in the national army, including many of its best officers, are alumni of the old Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army, the Nkomo force in the struggle against white minority rule that ended two years ago.

The United States and Hungary agreed today to grant each other's journalists multiple entry and exit visas, enabling them to visit when they please.

Amid high public expectations, the court-martial of the 32 officers and one civilian accused of plotting and executing last year's failed military coup opened today in a heavily guarded converted warehouse. The trial, which will almost certainly influence the course of Spain's fragile democracy, began with the reading of a detailed indictment chronicling the events that culminated in the seizure of Parliament on Feb. 23 by rebel Civil Guards. Case 2/81 is being considered by a panel of 17 generals and other senior officers. Seated by rank in two rows of red felt chairs, the accused listened silently as the accusation of ''military rebellion'' was amplified over loudpseakers in the modern warehouse, which had been used to store paper for the army's map-making department. Occasionally, defendants turned and waved to wives and other relatives from behind a big pane of bulletproof glass.