when a student doesn't want to engage with the class at a given time, this is not alleviated by taking away one object of concentration and substituting another (phone replaced by book/sleep/general dissociation). yet that is the result of the action.

Nah gimme a break. If a book is so easy to substitute for a phone, why don't I see crowds of people hanging out all reading their books, showing each other their highlighted passages?

A phone isn't "one object of concentration" it is 1 million objects.

instead, we have to change society and education so that students actually desire to be educated, or can be motivated to be educated without explicit threat of force and violence

Society is changed by changing society. This is what is means to change society. Collectively decide on a new norm and enforce it.