Ewing resident Nobo Komagata is a quiet, thoughtful man. But don’t let that fool you — he’s really a revolutionary.

Together with Ewing resident Colin Campbell, Komagata is the co-founder of the Mercer Free School. It’s an idea so simple, it’s amazing it doesn’t exist already. But in an age of universal public education and all its trappings and colleges with sky-high tuition, Komagota’s concept seems almost heretical. His school is free. There is no building. The teachers, (they’re called facilitators) aren’t paid. If the facilitator wants to teach something that requires materials, everyone chips in. But beyond that, no money changes hands, and there’s little if any paperwork. Classes take place in library meeting rooms, people’s houses, or wherever they can meet.

The school is not just financially free, but ideologically free as well. Other “free” classes promoted by church groups and businesses have their own agendas, Komagata said. But the Mercer Free School is just about learning.

“I think it’s all right for other organizations to promote their own ideas, but I think it’s also all right to have an organization that is not biased by those particular points of view,” he said.

Don’t confuse Komagata’s “free school” with the likes of the Brooklyn Free School, which lets kids vote on activities, and which costs $10,000 a year to attend. But like that free school and its ilk, Komagata’s idea comes straight out of the ’70s, specifically, from a 1976 book by John Holt called “Instead of Education.”

That book inspired several short-lived free schools in the 1970s and 80s. Those schools didn’t last. For one thing, there were costs of mailing materials, Komagata said. He gets around that by using the Internet, piggybacking his school’s Web site on bandwidth he already bought. But the main obstacle is psychological.

“One potential obstacle is that people tend to think that if it’s free, it’s worthless. That something free is less valuable than something that’s more expensive,” he said.

Komagata had a conventional education, going so far as to get a PhD. in computer science. He is now a stay-at-home dad with his five-year-old daughter. Komagata said he values and appreciates his education, but sees are flaws in the way traditional education is carried out.

“Traditional education is motivated by external rewards like grades or jobs or things like that,” Komagata said. “I think the real essence of great education is distorted by those things. The most important thing is intrinsic motivation - the inner urge to learn things. And that can happen not necessarily in a traditional or commercial context, but somewhere else. And this could be that place.”

The school’s Web site, online at http://www.mfs.insi2.org, lists activities currently scheduled, requested, and offered. So far, facilitators have been easier to find than students. Campbell is leading a Haiku workshop May 10. Komagata is leading a meditation group June 12 at the Ewing Library meeting room. His wife Sachiko is leading a sushi cooking workshop at her home June 26. (That one costs $3 to cover the costs of rice and avacado.) Pravin Philip is teaching calligraphy June 5.

Other workshops and groups planned are computer skills, bike maintenance, poetry and food gardening.

Komagata also plans to lead a “hypermiling” group. Hypermiling is the practice of driving a car for maximum fuel efficiency, accelerating slowly, coasting wherever possible and being loath to step on the brake pedal.

“I made many other drivers angry by doing that,” he said.

Signing up to join a class is simple - just go to the Web site and contact the facilitator. You can also request new classes on the Web site, or fill out a form to facilitate your own group, lecture or workshop.

This is a school in the most elemental definition of the word - a place where people learn things. All the titles, authority dynamics, tests, departments, financial incentives and physical facilities have been stripped away. But all that cultural baggage was created for a reason, at some point in the distant past. Can a school work without them?

Komagata hopes that in the age of the Internet, where people are used to getting great things for free, that the answer is yes.