What was going on when I was born?

THE State of New York has begun an effort to emphasize the teaching of writing in elementary schools by administering a test to every fifth grader and requiring remedial attention in the sixth grade for students who score below a minimum level. Education officials see the test not only as a tool for identifying the writing problems of students, but also as a way to prod the schools to lay greater stress on writing, which many believe does not get as much attention as reading and mathematics. ''I am sure this will put pressure on the schools to have kids write more,'' said Charles Chew, chief of the Bureau of English and Reading in the State Education Department. ''There just has not been enough attention in the last 10 years to having students generate ideas, get them down on paper and rework them.''

The Sports News Briefs column yesterday incorrectly identified the event in which Ramona Neubert set a world record. It was the heptathlon.

International The Pope praised the achievements of the outlawed Solidarity union and declared that the events it had set in motion were of a ''moral,'' nonviolent nature. John Paul II, speaking to about a million people in a vast field outside the Polish city of Katowice, said that ''these events concerned above all the moral order itself regarding human labor and not only wage increases.'' (Page A1, Column 6.) ''He has fulfilled his task completely,'' according to a man from Gdansk, basking in Poznan in the presence of Pope John Paul II. ''He came here and did good.'' A group of 760 people from Gdansk, where Solidarity was founded, stressed how pleased they were at the way the Pope's visit had become a political event. (A1:5.)

The personal income of Americans rose 1.2 percent in May, the biggest month-to-month increase in nearly two years, the Commerce Department reported today. Consumer spending rose even more in May than income, by 1.4 percent. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, whose department released the report, said the increases in personal income and spending ''will fuel further vigorous economic growth this summer.'' He added that the greater outlays were ''spurred by rising consumer confidence'' as well as the higher income and, in turn, should prompt businesses to spend more in coming months on capital investment and inventories in expectation of strong sales.

A group of black civil rights and political leaders voted today to approve the concept of a black candidate's seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination. Before making its decision, the group met with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has been traveling throughout the country to test support for a campaign on his part. But it stopped short of endorsing Mr. Jackson and in a ''unanimous decision'' agreed not to support any specific candidate for the time being. Instead, the group agreed to organize a ''black coalition for 1984, to work on voter registration and to promote a people's platform'' intended to project minority concerns in the Democratic campaign, according to Walter E. Fauntroy, Delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia.

The collapse of the Butcher brothers' banking empire, which has thrown the Tennessee financial world into turmoil, promises to tie up the courts and state regulators for months, if not years. But Tennessee's banking system has problems that go beyond the fallout from the Butcher banks. Unlike some other states, Tennessee is served by many small banks that are difficult to oversee and are possibly undercapitalized, some state officials said. They are especially vulnerable now, given the state's weak economy and deregulation, which is cutting profits. Bank failures here are not a new phenomenon. Longtime residents of this state are quick to recall Caldwell & Company, a major bond dealer that diversified into banking and then collapsed right before the stock market crash of 1929. while holding much of the state's money. In 1976, the Hamilton National Bank of Chattanooga was declared insolvent, making it then the third-largest bank failure since the Depression.

The farm on which Rick Plumb stands, worrying about the corn yet unplanted, once belonged to his greatgrandfather. Mr. Plumb's grandfather received it as a wedding present, and from there it came down through the generations. Rick Plumb grew up on the farm, and his memories befit a farm child: the barn raising when he was 2 years old; steering the tractor while sitting in his father's lap; showing his first Holstein in a country fair, and, at age 7, starting to do chores for 25 cents an hour. Typical, all that. What is not so typical is that, as a young man, Mr. Plumb did not turn his back on his family's dairy farm. Although he went away to college, he returned - part of what some experts call a resurgence of interest in farming by the young.

THE Omaha business executive, president of a major division of a multimillion-dollar conglomerate, seemed to take in stride the demands of his work and of an active family life. He was always so calm that everyone who knew him, including his wife, was shocked when he suffered a heart attack. The executive survived the heart attack to undergo studies at the University of Nebraska's Life Stress Simulation Laboratory, which revealed that his calm exterior belied hidden chaotic changes in his cardiovascular system whenever he was under stress. He was what Dr. Robert S. Eliot and his colleagues there have dubbed a ''hot reactor.'' Their recent discovery of this previously unappreciated response has led to a new understanding of how stress can precipitate heart disease and sudden death, even in people who seem outwardly calm. Hot reactors tend to overrespond physiologically under stress, although this overreaction is not apparent to anyone, including the hot reactors themselves. Their blood pressure rises sharply and other circulatory system responses may also occur: The output of the heart may increase or decrease, and the blood vessels may become more or less resistant to the flow of blood.

The majority leader of the State Senate, Warren M. Anderson, said today that the effort to improve pensions for some 300,000 public employees was dead for this legislative session unless the Democrats accepted the plan the Senate passed last week. ''There's nothing to negotiate,'' Mr. Anderson said through his spokesman, Charles Dumas. ''There's no more we are prepared to give.'' Mr. Dumas said that on Tuesday Senator Anderson, a Republican from Binghamton, would kill the pension-improvement bill passed by the Assembly, which contains provisions sought by Governor Cuomo, and the Senate would instead pass a bill simply extending the current pension plan for three years.

In the long struggle with Japanese companies for the American car market, there is one area where Detroit seems to be winning, at least for now: small, sporty pickup trucks. But the price advantage that Japanese companies are now emphasizing may take the edge off the gains made by the domestic producers. This growing market opened up when the Nissan Motor Corporation introduced a small truck in this country in the late 1950's. Until 1981, when imports accounted for 95 percent of all small-truck sales in the United States, Japanese companies were dominant.

Governor Cuomo announced tonight a tentative outof-court settlement with major oil companies over a tax, in dispute since 1980, that the companies had refused to pay. Under the agreement, the oil companies would drop their court challenges to $200 million in taxes already paid, and would pay the state $355 million more over the next four years. At the same time, the state would revise its taxes on oil companies to meet some objections by the companies. ''It is one of the most important settlements this state has ever made in its history,'' Mr. Cuomo said.

Working against a midnight deadline, House and Senate negotiators agreed tonight on an $860 billion Federal budget for the next fiscal year. The compromise, approved by voice vote, projects a $170 billion deficit and calls for $12 billion in new taxes in the fiscal year 1984 and $73 billion over three years. The White House has denounced the plan as ''out of line and off base'' because of the new taxes and because it provides less for military spending than President Reagan wants and $22 billion more than he sought for domestic spending. The deficit figure does not include $9 billion for antirecessionary programs proposed but not yet approved by Congress. The additional funds would be budgeted only if Congress approves the programs and they are signed into law. Mr. Reagan's budget called for a $190.2 billion deficit, which the Congressional Budget Office reestimated at $184 billion and the conferees placed at $171 billion.