There is no doubt that formal schooling has and still plays the role of almost a solitary agent of education in society. However, as time goes on, the question of formal schooling's adequacy in achieving 'true' education in modernity is increasingly being raised. Arguably, formal schooling looks to entertain conformity, social classification, psychological threats, and limits the skills development of learners. Therefore, there must be an alternative education model which creates more channels for learning so that society is no longer confined to the systems of formal schooling. In search of alternatives, deschooling society is becoming viable in today's education. This study aims to examine the understanding of Illich's deschooling society by scholars in the 21st century. The authors analyzed 23 articles related to Illich’s ideas published from 2000 to December 2020. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the texts and provide interpretations from the reviewed articles. The findings reveal that current scholars view deschooling society as a critical pedagogy that offers alternative learning opportunities to the learners. They argue that more education could be provided through newborn innovations such as flexible-learning in the open community, home-sch ol, work-based learning, the free choice of courses, open educational resources (OER), and massive open online courses (MOOC). On top of that, the openness of science in digital platforms or its pervasiveness in which it is organized in the modern community would most likely widen learning opportunities for the learners. These innovations are useful in transforming from the current formal education which has no bearing on the quality of education provided to the learners. This study calls for more academic researches and discussion on finding suitable ways for adopting Illich's ideas in modern society.