What was going on when I was born?

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said last night that the Middle East was at ''a moment of unprecedented opportunity'' for peace. He appealed to Israelis, moderate Arab leaders and Palestinians to agree to the American call for new negotiations. In a speech in New York to the na- Excerpts from speech, page A8. tional leadership of the United Jewish Appeal, Mr. Shultz strongly defended President Reagan's recent Middle East proposals and said the parties had to sit down together to overcome the significant differences among the Arab, Israeli and American stances.

As a weeklong series of school openings continues today, many suburban school districts in the New York metropolitan area are cutting back special programs in the face of the decline in Federal funds for them that totals $300 million nationally. Few districts are ending the programs. But to maintain them, many districts plan to serve fewer students with fewer teachers and less equipment, and either to raise local taxes or to shift existing funds at the expense of other programs. In Montclair, N.J., for example, a system of so-called magnet schools established to aid in desegregation lost its entire $896,000 Federal aid package, said Mary Lee Fitzgerald, the superintendent of schools. The school district saved the program by dismissing 52 of 653 district employees, she said.

Stephen I. D'Agostino, chief executive officer of the D'Agostino Supermarkets chain and chairman of the Food Marketing Institute, the industrywide trade organization, will leave the supermarket field on Oct. 23 after 27 years in the business. The 48-year-old executive, long considered one of the retail food industry's top managers, will become president of the J.T.L. Corporation, Chattanooga, Tenn., the nation's largest independent Coca-Cola bottling company. He will also resign his post in the supermarket trade association on the same day. The career change may surprise many in the supermarket field for whom Mr. D'Agostino has been a dynamic spokesman. Evidence of an industry stature that exceeded the relatively small size of the company he headed came in May 1981, when he was elected chairman of the 1,200-corporate-member Food Marketing Institute in Washington.

Mao Zedong's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng, was dropped from the Chinese leadership today. Most of the older Communist Party veterans remained in their posts. There had been expectations among Chinese officials as well as foreign diplomats here that Ye Jianying, now 85 years old, and his elderly colleagues on the Politburo would have been encouraged to retire. The fact that they did not was seen by some diplomats here as evidence that Deng Xiaoping, China's dominant leader, had failed to push through a planned rejuvenation of the party's leadership to make way for younger, more moderate talent.

Occupied West Bank, Sept. 12 - From the narrow streets that wind among the stone houses of this West Bank Arab village, the Jewish settlement of Shiloh can be seen spreading down from a hilltop a few miles away. Between them lies a road, a valley and a gulf of silence. The children of Sinjil do not play with the children of Shiloh. The men of Sinjil do not sit and talk over sweet tea and bitter coffee with the men of Shiloh. They do not speak to each other about their dreams for the land they both love, of the peace they both desire. ''There are some settlers who have stores, and they come and buy vegetables from us,'' says Azad Shehad, one of the four mukhtars, or elders, of Sinjil. ''Otherwise, I think that there is no contact at all.''

Regular Lebanese Army troops clashed with a small group of leftist militiamen here today after the militiamen opened fire on a Moslem delegation en route to pay its respects to President-elect Bashir Gemayel. It was the first major challenge to the Lebanese Army's efforts to maintain security in the capital since the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was completed on Sept. 1.

The Reagan Administration, in a major reinterpretation of the Clean Water Act, is encouraging localities to scale back sewage treatment plants, which will increase the flow of organic pollutants into rivers and coastal waters. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency said it expected up to 85 applications from New York and New Jersey to permit the discharge of incompletely treated sewage. The new policy applies both to existing plants and plants under construction. Nationwide, as many as 800 applications are expected, according to a General Accounting Office study. If the requests are granted, municipalities will save $4 billion to $10 billion in construction and operating costs, according to the study. Federal officials say the change of policy will not endanger fish habitats or recreational use of the nation's waterways.

With an assortment of tricks that confused the Jets' feared pass rush and kept it off balance, the Miami Dolphins defeated the New York Jets yesterday for the first time since 1977. The score was 45-28 before a frustrated opening-day crowd at Shea Stadium. When was the last time a pro quarterback caught a touchdown pass? The Dolphins' David Woodley did it yesterday. When was the last time the New York Sack Exchange failed to catch a quarterback? Twentyeight games ago.

As lunch boxes are christened with peanut butter sandwiches, pencils are sharpened and the cellophane is stripped off new notebooks, parents of New York City schoolchildren may face a few special problems. Educators offered some last-minute advice yesterday on questions ranging from inoculation procedures to what to do if the school bus does not show up. Inoculations: Public-school children in New York City must have shots for measles, mumps, rubella and polio, as well as a diphtheria pertussis tetanus (DPT) inoculation. Children who have satisfied the requirements in previous years do not have to do anything - it is on their records.

The sharp drop in interest rates since late June has come to a halt partly because credit market participants are waiting to see how the Federal Reserve reacts to recent and prospective growth in the nation's money supply. A weak economy with reduced business credit demands and low inflation still points toward lower interest rates in the long run, many analysts say. But there is a fear that short-term rates could rise in the next two months as the Fed tries to reduce growth in the money supply by making reserves scarcer in the banking system. A crucial issue is whether the money supply increases that are widely forecast for the first weeks of September and October will be temporary bulges or will be part of a fundamental increase in the public's demand for money. The former would improve the chances for renewed rate declines, while the latter would indicate stable or higher rates.

It was tennis and football to the east, football to the west and baseball to the north. Somewhere at or among these points yesterday were those who wanted to watch, those who wanted to find a parking spot, those who wanted to stay cool and those who just wanted to play their own games on a big sports day for New York. The end of the United States Open tennis tournament was a triumphant one for Jimmy Connors - already this year's Wimbledon champion - who beat Ivan Lendl, 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4, at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens. This One Is 'Different' ''Wimbledon is Wimbledon and it's always going to be Wimbledon,'' Connors said of his fourth Open victory yesterday. ''But this is different. It's here. It's in my territory and I like that.''

A Reuters dispatch in Business Day Wednesday about the Continental Group's plans to convert an 890-mile natural gas pipeline to carry light pe- troleum products contained several inaccuracies attributable to the Fed- eral Energy Regulatory Commission. The Florida Gas Transmission Com- pany, a subsidiary of the Continental Group, plans to sell the line, which is to be converted to carry oil, to the Transgulf Pipeline Company, another unit of the Continental Group, for $236 million. Florida Gas will then modify its system to continue providing cus- tomers the same volume of gas they now receive, 725 million cubic feet a day.