"I taught Esperanto in a Montessori school for several years, and found that it gave the kids a great foundation in the skills of how to learn another language.  It was also a great bridging language - in W.A, it's common for primary school children to start learning several different languages due to the shortage of LOTE teachers.  A child may start learning French, but when the French teacher leaves and another can't be found, they switch to Japanese for a couple of years, and then maybe Mandarin.  After that, they may go to a high school which offers only Indonesian and Italian.  With Esperanto, the kids have a great set of skills which they can easily transfer to other languages.  I had many children who did Esperanto in primary school tell me that they had a head start when learning a new language in high school. 
 
Studying Esperanto also gave us the opportunity to learn about all kinds of cultures and countries around the world.  The kids had pen pals from all over the world, and I took a group of Perth students on an Esperanto exchange to Switzerland."