pencil panic: relearning the art of writing

although this topic merits more research than i’m going to give it here, i just had a thought as i’ve been marking composition papers again for the first time in months. my writers always compose their projects outside of class – ostensibly, this means that they are all using the latest technology to produce their finished work. so my question, after reading several accompanying handwritten notes to their drafts is:

do we need to start teaching the act of physical writing (here I mean the pressure of in class writing with only a pen and paper) in this age of electronic communication?

perhaps i ask this question for selfish reasons, as i suffer from extreme writing panic. i’ve become so accustom to electronic born writing that using a pen and paper to record something feels very foreign and also makes me unsure of myself -- constantly questioning the spelling of words, for example. in my student’s case, this time, their handwritten notes are filled with spelling and word choice errors, while their accompanying electronic texts do not reflect the same kind of issues. in my own case, i was terrified by the thought of taking my master’s comprehensive exams using a pen and paper and honestly had no idea how i would ever be able to write a clear and concise response to any of the questions using that mode of communication. luckily, that university offered the option of taking the exam on computer. but being able to write comfortably and with confidence without the aid of a software program is, from my perspective, an extremely important task. are we losing the ability to script? and does that even matter?