The modern models of the developing education are analyzed in connection with the problem of intellectual activity. Leading concepts of home and foreign authors in the theoretical comprehension and realization are considered in modern pedagogical practice. In the theory of mental experience taken for basis in the article, three basic layers (or levels) are distinguished in the structure of mental experience, determining the degree of intellectual activity: experience (mental structures responsible for the operative processing of information); cognition (mental structures, providing management possibility own intellectual activity); experience (mental structures being the basis of selectivity and intellectual activity). We think that further investigation of the problem of development of psychological and pedagogical models of education, resulting in the increase of intellectual activity, should be considered in a broader context of realization of mechanisms of humour in education as a basis of development of intellectual activity.