September 27, 1981

CHAPPAQUA ''YOU may not see any major differences between the way classes are conducted here and at other schools,'' a teacher at the Horace Greeley High School was saying to a visitor the day after fall classes had begun. ''You will see students who are motivated. But you will also see students who are not prepared for the day's lesson. You will see teachers who are excited about their work and others who are not. ''Academic excellence just isn't something that necessarily comes out in the classrooms. At least not something you can physically see or touch.''

Those who find history boring might have dozed off as they watched it being made at the New York City polls last week. In a political coup that capped weeks of utterly bearable suspense, Mayor Koch became the first city candidate to win Decmocratic and Republican nominations.

THE pragmatist and the conservative true believer in Ronald Reagan fou ght over e conomic policy again last week. The true believer won. Calling for m ore slashes in domestic spending and just a nick out of defense, he d emanded that a weary Congress go back at the budget until they ge t it right. Even critics like Charles T. Manatt, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, conceded that the television address was ''as always, a good political speech.'' There was firmness, reassurance, and even an untypical call for sacrifice, along with the $13 billion solution.

RABBIT IS RICH By John Updike. 467 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $13.95. RABBIT ANGSTROM keeps coming back, like a song that says ''remember.'' Born deep in the well of John Updike's nostalgia, he summons Updike home. Not to Shillington, Pa., the hometown that Updike left behind some decades ago, but to nearby Reading and the suburb Updike calls Mt. Judge. Rabbit and Updike have a relation that may be unique in literature. Once Arnold Bennett created Clayhanger or Ford Madox Ford his Tietjens, each stayed with his character. Trollope wrote other books in between work on his Barchester and Palliser novels, but Trollope never focused his series on one place or character. Updike, though, published ''Rabbit Run'' in 1960, ''Rabbit Redux'' in 1971 -and now ''Rabbit Is Rich.'' In between, there has been no reason to believe that Updike cares any more about what happens to Harry ''Rabbit'' Angstrom than he does about characters he has been content to create and abandon. But then the summons comes.

MICHAEL JONES had been a Bell telephone salesman for 10 years when the company told him last spring that he would have to prove himself again. Mr. Jones, who requested his real name not be used, was told to write a report and submit other documents showing that he knew how to organize an account, knew the Bell product line, knew the Bell marketing strategies. He was given less than a month to prepare the report, on his own time. A special board of crack salesmen was set up to judge his dossier and those of his co-workers. ''I feel like it was kind of crazy to all of a sudden turn around and justify your existence,'' Mr. Jones said, who left Bell in June and now works for another telecommunications company. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company does not think it crazy. It is requiring all 6,500 of its account executives to be certified, a test so rigorous that one of the executives in charge estimated that only 15 to 20 percent are passing on the first try.