Faith statements--"Correct" faith or honest doubt?

Our 9th-grade confirmation students have to do faith statements before they are confirmed into the church. I think this is a pretty normal thing--I remember having to do it when I was in confirmation, anyway--and it has been the expectation here from long before I arrived. But today, as I'm reading through drafts that these young men and women have written, I confess I'm not sure I know what to do with them.

It seems to me there are two possibilities. One is to have the students learn the "correct" answers by which I mean the answers that are given by the creeds and the confessions of our church. But then what is the point of an individual statement of faith? It reminds me of classes at the seminary with Dr. Steven Paulson who was adamant in his tests that we write what he taught, not what we believe, because--he often said--"I'm scared of what you believe." However, then these aren't really statements of faith. I may as well have them copy off the creeds.

Option two is that I allow the youth to write whatever they want. Maybe they believe in God as we confess in the creeds; maybe they don't. Maybe they think the church is important for their faith; maybe they don't. That's honest. It's also a real indicator of the church, their families and my own failure to get across what we want to teach to the next generation. However, it's also messy. It's messy because of the difficulty in discerning what to share with the congregation, and what not to, when it comes to confessions that are not in line with what our church believes. It would be one thing if these were statements that stayed between myself and the youth, but it's quite another when these are broadcast in our newsletters.

I struggle with this quite a lot. On the one hand I have in my ear the voice of a member who said, "You can't judge a person's opinion." On the other I have the burden of a tradition to carry on. We're going to talk about this today amongst the ninth-graders. Maybe I'll have some better ideas then, but for now I'm just pondering. Feel free to comment and help me along.