What was going on when I was born?

The Peronist party was defeated in Argentina for the first time in nearly 40 years as Raul Alfonsin, the leader of a middle-class party, unexpectedly won a presidential election. Mr. Alfonsin received 52 percent of the vote to 40 percent for the Peronist, Italo Luder. Ten smaller parties split the balance. (Page A1, Column 6.) At least 12 people were killed early in the invasion of Grenada last week when an American Navy plane bombed a building that turned out to be a civilian hospital, the Penatagon acknowledged. Officials said the building was not marked as a hospital and was situated in a military complex from which gunfire was being directed at American troops. (A1:1.)

The United States has decided to remove some of the economic sanctions against Poland dating from the imposition of martial law in 1981, Reagan Administration officials said today. They said the decision, made last week, had been conveyed to the allies and to Poland, and would be made public soon. In Warsaw, an offer of amnesty for underground leaders of Solidarity expired and there were indications that it might be extended as a gesture of reconciliation. (Page A7.)

MOST of the current discussion of how to improve the nation's schools focuses on higher pay for teachers, a longer school year and more structured curriculums. To Amitai Etzioni, though, such ideas are, for the most part, beside the point. ''It's all too mechanical,'' said the 54-year old sociologist. ''The assumption is that kids are machines and that all you have to do to get more output is to increase the input of books, teachers and time. They are neglecting the development of the children as human beings.'' Mr. Etzioni, who is University Professor at George Washington University in Washington, has frequently been an advocate of paying more attention to the personality development of students in American schools. On the basis of a new analysis of data compiled in the late 1970's by James S. Coleman of the University of Chicago, he now offers additional support for this position.

Talk about chaos. The price of Texas Instruments stock shot up and the price of its home computer shot down yesterday in the wake of the company's withdrawal from the turbulent home computer market. The stock market traded nearly two million shares of Texas Instruments, and the price per share jumped $22.75, to $124.50. And for a while it seemed possible that some retailers, at least in Manhattan, were unloading the company's previously popular 99/4A home computer for as little as $20 each - if buyers managed to get rebates now being discontinued.

Even in Caesar's time, says Mayor Koch, when all they had was chariots, they had potholes in the Appian Way. Today the Mayor presides over an empire of potholes, more than 700,000 of them a year, and over a crumbling road system that is the legacy of long neglect. His chariot traffic of automobiles and heavy trucks travels an estimated 44 million miles a day over the 6,200 miles of roads and highways in New York. After years of neglect, the street repairs have now become the single biggest expense in the Mayor's 10-year plan for capital development. The bad streets are also a serious source of indirect costs, including damage to vehicles and working time lost in traffic.

''If the Lebanese fire is not put out now, before it is too late, only God knows where this fire will spread and how much it will threaten the Arab world and the world as a whole.'' world and the world as a whole.'' - President Amin Gemayel of Lebanon. (A8:1.)

With $426 million in claims at stake, the Energy Department proposed today to abandon the program under which the nation's oil refiners were required to make cost-equalization payments to each other while prices were under Federal control. This means that some companies with below-average crude oil costs would be relieved of paying tens of millions of dollars in liabilities that were on the Energy Department's books when President Reagan lifted the remaining price controls in January 1981. By the same token, other, high-cost refiners would not receive similar payments to which the department reckoned they had been entitled. The department invited comments on the proposal during the next 30 days. But however Secretary Donald P. Hodel rules on the matter after receiving the comments, his decision is sure to touch off a new burst of lawsuits, either from those who will receive no money or from those required to pay.

The leader of a middle-class party has swept to victory in Argentina's presidential elections, handing the union- based Peronists their first election defeat in nearly four decades. Raul Alfonsin, a former congressman, lawyer and co-founder of the Argentine Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, emerged today as the suprise winner of elections held Sunday. As the candidate of the Radical Civic Union, he upset the predictions of even his own supporters by winning 52 percent of the vote to 40 percent for Italo Luder, the Peronist. The election, called by the ruling military, was a stunning defeat for the Peronists, who have dominated Argentina's political life since their party was founded in 1945 by Juan Domingo Peron.

A Federal judge in Kansas City ruled yesterday that the television newscaster Christine Craft was not a victim of sex discrimination by her former employer. On a separate fraud charge, Federal District Judge Joseph E. Stevens Jr. threw out a jury's award of $500,000 in damages. He said, ''The court is firmly convinced this verdict is excessive and is the result of passion, prejudice, confusion or mistake on the part of the jury.'' He added that the jury had been adversely affected by ''pervasive and relentless publicity'' surrounding the case.

An article yesterday on the Internal Revenue Service incorrectly identified the owner of Donnelley Marketing Service. It is Dun & Bradstreet Inc.

President Amin Gemayel opened the long-awaited Lebanese peace conference today with an appeal to his country's warlords and factional leaders to set aside their differences because ''our country is dying.'' ''It moans under the weight of ruins and fears,'' he continued. ''If our country continues to burn, the fire will spread beyond its borders and nothing will be left of our beloved Lebanon to either unite or divide.'' The first session of the talks, known as the national reconciliation conference, lasted 20 minutes. There appeared to be almost no warmth or friendliness among the 11 participants. The session consisted solely of speeches by President Gemayel and President Pierre Aubert of Switzerland,

In campaigning for the proposed $1.25 billion New York State transportation bond issue, proponents have gone to great lengths to argue that this one is different from all previous bond issues because of what they say are guarantees that the money will not be squandered or diverted. They are seeking to overcome the resistance to bond issues that has been generated by unfullfilled promises of the past, and they are making some sweeping claims of their own. ''This bond issue is unigue - uniquely specific,'' Governor Cuomo has said repeatedly in recent weeks. ''We've never had a bond issue that said as clearly as this one says, and legally, how you spend the money.'' Voters, said Robert Sullivan, Mr. Cuomo's pollster, ''express a skepticism that the bonded money will actually be spent on what it is supposed to be spent on.''