October 22, 1984

Camille Brown intently studied ''The Atlas of Our Motherland.'' Then, leaning over her exercise map, she wrote in Cyrillic letters, ''Chernoye More.'' Few ninth-grade students in New York high schools are asked in geography class to identify the Black Sea in Russian. But for Camille and the 46 other students enrolled at St. Sergius High School in Manhattan, one of a handful of bilingual Russian-English schools in the United States, such an assignment is commonplace.

President Reagan and Walter F. Mondale battled through a debate tonight that was marked by pointed exchanges on foreign policy and Mr. Reagan's competence. Mr. Mondale hammered at the theme that Mr. Reagan had failed the test of Presidential leadership by not curbing the Central Intelligence Agency's activities in Central America, not protecting American installations in Lebanon and not mastering the subject matter of nuclear arms control. While the President spent much of the debate defending his policies and clarifying earlier statements, he also linked Mr. Mondale to economic and military policies he said were rejected four years ago and said his rival had opposed advances in military preparedness throughout his career. 'Who's in Charge?' At one point, in a remark that seemed to make Mr. Reagan angry, Mr. Mondale said: ''Who's in charge? Who's handling these matters? That's my main point.''

When the time had come to identify himself, Cpl. Stephen Jones of the Royal Air Force and Barry, Wales, said that he still considered himself a 10,000- meter runner. ''I'm not a marathon runner,'' he said today after he completed one for the first time and won the America's Marathon-Chicago in 2 hours 8 minutes 5 seconds, a world record. The 29-year-old Jones, who was eighth in the 10,000-meter run at the Olympics, ran away from a pack that included Carlos Lopes of Portugal, the Olympic marathon champion, and Rob DeCastella of Australia, who had won the 1983 World Championship Marathon at Helsinki, Finland. Jones broke the record of 2:08:13 set by Alberto Salazar at the 1981 New York City Marathon.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1984 The Economy OPEC members are gathering in Geneva to plan a strategy to avoid an oil price war. The plan will be presented to a formal meeting next Monday. But analysts say that the organization's problems are more complex than the current price of oil. (Page A1.)

The White House national security adviser said today that President Reagan would dismiss any United States official who developed or approved the Central Intelligence Agency manual advising Nicaraguan rebels to commit political assassinations. The adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, said Mr. Reagan ''will deal with this as he has with other issues in this domain, unequivocally, firmly, promptly.'' The primer became public last week, and on Thursday the President ordered two investigations to determine if the C.I.A. acted improperly in preparing it. Mr. McFarlane said he expected the investigations to be completed ''within a week or so.'' 'A Subordinate Thing' Asked if the C.I.A.'s director, William J. Casey, will be dismissed if the investigation shows that he was involved, Mr. McFarlane said, ''Whoever was involved ought to be fired.''