January 8, 1984

WASHINGTON PRESIDENT REAGAN'S talents for making the best of adversity were being tested last week. Like a man pulling rabbits out of his hat, he was trying to show a skeptical public and Congress that Administration policies in the Middle East and Central America were better than they looked. In Lebanon, there were signs of diplomatic progress that Mr. Reagan could conceivably use as a reason for withdrawing American troops, or at least redeploying them more safely. In El Salvador, there was marked military deterioration. Yet Presidential aides hoped that a bipartisan commission on Central America, headed by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, could build support for increases in military and economic aid. The commission's seven-volume report, due this week, may seek more aid than Mr. Reagan is prepared to support. The commission was contemplating an extraordinary recommendation - $8 billion in aid to Central America over the next five years.

SO much attention has been lavished in recent decades on two of the three R's - reading and arithmetic - that the third, writing, has seemed all but forgotten in the nation's schools. But as evidence mounts that students at all levels in the educational cycle are doing very little writing and are deficient in the reasoning ability and critical-thinking skills that go hand-in-hand with good writing, the situation is beginning to change: the teaching of writing is assuming fresh prominence. This change, accompanied by a multitude of critical reports that reinforce its urgency, takes various forms and includes several new techniques. Several states, including New York, are adding a writing test to their requirements for a high school diploma, and more colleges and universities, including science-oriented institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are establishing composition requirements. Florida's Legislature has even made writing proficiency a matter of statute, enacting a law to award extra money to districts that reduce class size in high school English courses and assign students at least one composition a week.

NEARLY a year ago, at the end of the football season, the idea first occurred to Lester Hayes, cornerback for the Los Angeles Raiders and observer of the human condition, that he may have made a remarkable discovery. He was in Honolulu, practicing for the Pro Bowl game, chatting with Mike Haynes of the New England Patriots. ''I didn't say anything,'' Haynes remembered. Haynes was about to become a free agent, but at the time he did not anticipate leaving the Patriots. So when Haynes mentioned that he was going to become a free agent, this was no great discovery. ''I didn't forsee any problems, really,'' Haynes said. Hayes talked briefly about the possibility of Haynes's playing for the Raiders, and that was that.

THE two decades after World War II have been called a ''golden age'' of growth and stability for the United States and the rest of the industrial world. ''In the 'Golden Age' of the 1950's and 1960's,'' said Angus Maddison, a British economist, ''economic growth in the advanced capitalist countries surpassed virtually all historical records.'' But, starting in the late 1960's, the United States economy was battered by a series of economic and political shocks that turned the golden age into an age of tin. First came President Johnson's ''guns and butter'' policy that bred inflation during the Vietnam war; then came President Nixon's surprise of Aug. 15, 1971, when he suspended convertibility of the dollar into gold, imposed wage-price controls and embarked on a highly stimulative fiscal and monetary policy. International financial chaos and the end of the Bretton Woods monetary system of fixed exchange rates hit the world economy in 1973, and the OPEC nations twice in that decade tipped the world into economic shock with monumental increases in oil prices.

A significant widening of the fighting appears to have taken place in South Africa's four-week campaign in southern Angola. The Government said today that in a three-day battle earlier this week, it had directly engaged Cuban troops and scored a major victory over them and their Angolan allies. Since a civil war erupted in Angola almost nine years ago, South African policy, as publicly expressed, has been to avoid direct combat with both the Angolans and their Soviet-supplied Cuban allies. In the same period, the Angolans have insisted that the Cubans play the role of a defensive rearguard.