What was going on when I was born?

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1984 International Ground for compromise with Moscow will be sought by the United States in preliminary arms-control talks between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Secretary Andrei A. Gromyko in Geneva on Jan. 7-8. Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan's national security adviser, said the United States was prepared to ''flexible and constructive'' in the negotiations. (Page A1, Column 6.) A Philippines Communist insurgency is growing rapidly, largely because people have begun to accept its presence, Filipino officials say. The insurgency is strongest on the big southern island of Mindanao. A gun-toting Wild West atmosphere prevails there. Law and order is often lacking and, according to human rights groups, abuses by the Philippine military are frequent. (A1:5.)

American colleges and universities are failing to give students ''an adequate education in the culture and civilization of which they are members,'' a panel convened by the National Endowment for the Humanities asserted yesterday. College faculties have caved in to vocational and other pressures from students and abdicated their authority over what students should study and learn, the panel's report said. ''Most of our college graduates remain shortchanged in the humanities - history, literature, philosophy and the ideals and practices of the past that have shaped the society they enter,'' said the report, written by William J. Bennett, the endowment's chairman. Fewer Humanities Majors The 31-member panel cited declining enrollment in the humanities in both high schools and colleges as well as decreased numbers of students choosing humanities majors as evidence that the humanities in general and the study of Western civilization in particular ''have lost their central place in the undergraduate curriculum.'' The document, ''To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education,'' laments what it terms the ''steady erosion'' in structured curriculums with specific course requirements.

New York City and its school system, trying to prevent teen-age girls from leaving school to care for their out-of-wedlock babies, are now financing day-care centers for young mothers in 17 high schools. Two years ago, only five such programs existed. Now, 14 schools are operating day-care centers on the premises and by the spring term 3 more will do so. Of those 17 schools, 10 are regular neighborhood high schools and 7 are alternative schools or special programs for former or likely dropouts. Day care is also being offered to teen-age mothers living in welfare hotels. At two other high schools, young mothers are taking advantage of ''satellite'' day care - child care in private homes near the schools. As part of the programs, many schools are offering ''parenting'' courses for young mothers and, in rare instances, young fathers.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1984 International The World Bank is beginning to reflect differences in international opinion about how best to help the third world. The U.S., in particular, has voted no on a large number of loan proposals. Although the U.S. does not have veto power, its naysaying, many officials say, is influencing the bank's staff. (Page A1.)

United States machine tool orders, a gauge of business plans to increase production, rose 40 percent in October, to $283.5 million, from $202.6 million a year earlier, the National Machine Tool Builders' Association reported yesterday. But the figure was down nine-tenths of 1 percent from September's level of $286.2 million.

When Neil G. Bluhm, president of the JMB Realty Corporation, is asked to appraise the nearly square block of vacant land across from his company's headquarters on Chicago's exclusive North Michigan Avenue, he smiles and calls it ''just a hunk of dirt right now.'' The site is part of the $1 billion real estate portfolio that JMB obtained when it acquired the Urban Investment and Development Company from the Aetna Life and Casualty Company earlier this month. Chicago-based Urban Investment is poised to begin construction on the site of a 64-story, $350 million mixed- use development, anchored by the Middle West's first Bloomingdale's department store. That will give JMB another chance to practice the alchemy that has turned such ''hunks of dirt'' into a $9 billion real estate portfolio that includes interests in such projects as Boston's Faneuil Hall marketplace. For most of its 16 years, privately held JMB has been known as one of the nation's premier real estate syndicators, assembling publicly and privately held limited real estate partnerships for individual and institutional investors. The limited partner has no active role in management of the property and his or her risk is limited to the initial capital contribution.

President Reagan's national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, said today that the United States was prepared to be ''flexible and constructive'' in arms- control talks with the Soviet Union. Mr. McFarlane said the United States would be seeking grounds for possible compromise with Moscow in preliminary talks between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, to be held in Geneva on Jan. 7 and 8. Although the tone of some his remarks on the talks was positive, Mr. McFarlane cautioned that he expected no quick, dramatic, general agreements on arms control to result from the renewed talks. He was interviewed in Washington on the CBS News program ''Face the Nation.''

A combination of excellence and luck enabled the Seattle Seahawks to end their long chase of the Denver Broncos today. The Seahawks defeated the Broncos, 27-24, to break Denver's 10-game winning streak this season and pull even with them in the Western Division of the American Conference. Each team now has an 11-2 record with three games to play. One of those games is a rematch in Seattle on the final Sunday of the season.

A Communist insurgency is growing rapidly throughout the Philippines, in part because people have begun to accept its presence, Filipino officials and foreign diplomats say. The insurgency is strongest on the big southern island of Mindanao. Here, a gun-toting Wild West atmosphere prevails, law and order is a scarce commodity and, according to human rights groups, abuses by the Philippine military are frequent. All this has helped the guerrillas - the New People's Army - who portray themselves as a ''Robin Hood'' movement fighting social, economic and political injustices for which they blame the Government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Sharply declining prices and a new portable model made by the Sony Corporation have brought the compact audio disk player, which has done only moderately well since it was introduced in the United States in 1983, into the consumer mainstream. In fact, industry experts predict sales will take off during the Christmas season, and that by this time next year, the disk player will be one of the hottest items in the consumer electronics market, second only to the video cassette recorder. ''It is a substantially superior audio system, but until now its high price has been limiting its appeal,'' said Eugene G. Glazer, first vice president at Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. ''However, with general price levels coming down and the number of recordings increasing, sales are going to mushroom.'' Jerry Shulman, a vice president at CBS Inc., said: ''I'm in the music business and I have thousands of LP's, but I haven't listened to an album in two years.''

As William E. Dick sees it, the future of American banking is now being charted here, well removed from the money centers of Manhattan. While Congress worries, seemingly in an unhurried way, about whether banks should be allowed to open offices across state lines, Mr. Dick said, interstate banking has arrived at this Atlantic Coast community and at dozens of small towns elsewhere. ''We're already providing most of the services that local bankers are, with the exception of deposit-taking,'' added Mr. Dick, a Citicorp vice president and regional manager of its consumer lending subsidiary, which has 91 facilities in 38 states. 'We're Already Here' ''The interstate banking issue is really a misnomer. We're already here,'' said Mr. Dick with pride and a touch of hyperbole.

A 17- member surgical team today removed the diseased heart of a 52-year-old man and replaced it with a plastic-and- metal pump. But later the patient, William J. Schroeder, was taken back to the operating room because of ''excessive bleeding,'' his doctors said. Officials at Humana Heart Institute International here, where the surgery was performed, said tonight that the doctors had identified the source of the bleeding as needle holes in scar tissue where the artificial heart was sewn to the back wall of the aorta, the major blood vessel of the body. They said that they were able to stop the bleeding but that Mr. Schroeder had required a transfusion of almost 16 pints of blood, half before the surgery and half during it. They termed the blood loss ''significant.''