Re-armouring education; Educated Guesses, by Richard Armour. Woodbridge Press Publishing Company, PO Box 6189, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93111. $5.95.

Richard Armour has the graceful ability to create light rejoinders on serious subjects. ''Educated Guesses'' is a new compilation of essays on education, many of which first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, Saturday Review, and elsewhere.

A capsule history, ''From Eden to the PTA,'' opens the volume; ''Musings of a College Trustee'' closes it. In between are pages that permit the author to ''think with a smile,'' as the author has obviously done.

For example, there is truth as well as humor in ''Ziegler's Law,'' which is ''the amount of education received depends on how close a student is to the teacher in a classroom.''

The book is packed with ideas and free of pedagogical jargon - a statement hard to make about most writing on education.

Enjoy, employ the nuggets of wisdom in this highly readable volume.